Although I love to be on the road to discover new places in the world, I also love doing some simple stuff outside and in the street with the people that I run into on the daily. Nothing better than being a good neighbor and taking care of the plants and the chickens where there is a reason for the neighbors to be gone.
A small gesture to help them out for a bit, and in return...getting some eggs from the coop and maybe snagging a fruit here and there from the fruit tree because it is ripe and ready to be used.
Now while I was walking down to the chicken coop I saw this bush with some orange fruits in there which were absolutely stunning and I had never noticed them before.
The colors were super vibrant and it looked like a super ripe fruit on there. I felt a bit on them, but they were very light in weight and it almost felt like they were hollow inside.
Sooooo....on the hunt again!
This got me more curious honestly, because initially this looked a bit like a peach or a mango, but the weight was telling me something different. And apart from that, this is the Netherlands so climate wise we don't have this kinds of things growing.
I gave in one of these images to Gemini AI and it came up with that this is a Passiflora Incarnata or better said a Maypop. Maybe that is something totally logical for your in another place, but I had never heard of this, nor ever seen it.
Especially here in the in general North European climate.
It also said that it has can have a bit of an acquired taste and that the ones turning yellow are more ripe. That alone to me is funny as I would have thought that the orange ones are more ripe than the yellow ones.
Maybe that is just a lack of knowledge on tropical fruit by me hahaha.
The reality of tasting
So after I have having a beer with my neighbors and asking what this plant actually was, they confirmed that this was a sort of passion fruit and it was actually very nice to eat. I hadn't tried any before in the moment of seeing the bush, because I am not really comfortable eating from the trees as I have no idea what it was and I didn't want to end up with some weird poisonous apple kind of idea just because I wanted to try. These fruits were good to give it a go!
I cut one open and it has small little juicy seed balls inside and I was expecting the super sour taste of an unripe passion fruit. But to my surprise the taste was extremely gentle and sweet and it was actually super pleasant to eat!.
Huh!
Now my neighbor said that this plant also has like a 1 day kind of flower in there which is also beautiful so I googled them to take a look.
Amazon.nl
This is what I found and that is brutal right? Again...when seeing these kinds of flowers as well, it is so hard to grasp that this is growing in the climate over here, as these look more than tropical.
Pleasant surprise!
Now my neighbor said that she would try to make some cuttings from the bush for me to try growing it also next year, as this one is just really cool.
As expected this one needs full sun and heat to grow to the fullest, and you have to cut it entirely down before winter, only to let it grow back up meters high per month in the full summer.
Talk about the most random find! Now I need to think of a full sunny spot where this monster has some room to grow over the next years.
What an awesome find!