Passiflora incarnata

Passiflora incarnata, commonly known as maypop, purple passionflower, true passionflower, wild apricot and wild passion vine, is a fast-growing perennial vine with climbing or trailing stems and many tendrils. It belongs to the passionflower genus Passiflora and has large, intricate bluish-white flowers with a white and purple corona, prominent styles and stamens. It is one of the hardiest passionflowers, found as a wildflower in the southern United States and reaching into the central states as far as Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and it is also cultivated for its edible fruit and showy blooms. The fruit is an oval yellowish berry about the size of a hen egg, holding black seeds in gelatinous pulp, and it gets the name maypop because it can pop when stepped on. The plant grows in thickets, disturbed ground, riverbanks and roadsides in full sun, and it is the larval food of butterflies such as the zebra longwing, the Gulf fritillary and the variegated fritillary. The Cherokee called it ocoee, and it is the Tennessee state wildflower. It can become an agricultural weed.