Living with maypops
At first it was a bright green three-lobed leaf that emerged in the spring of last year. Whazzit? My phone told me it was a maypop leaf, aka Passiflora incarnata, related to passion flowers that folks plant along fences for the exotic flowers and to hide from neighbors. Plus, I learned it bears an edible fruit at the end of the season. I’d never grown them before, so why not?
Soon enough, a maypop vine began to climb a nearby trellis, and not far away in the bed, three or four more bright green maypop leaves broke through. How’d they get here? I plant many kinds of seeds, but never maypops. Am I in trouble? Didn’t matter – my four-year old child scientist/explorer mentality intended to learn the maypop way of life.
I learned the Cherokee nation held maypops in high esteem. The species is native to the southeastern part of the United States and in some places is abundant. Maypops are hardier than others in the passionflower family, so Cherokee families could count on the vines fading in winter but re-emerging in spring and spreading rapidly through a sunlit opening in the forest. Flowers bloomed in July, and fruit ripened in late summer.
This was my experience also on a lesser scale. The things I did not know about maypops could fill a dictionary, so I let them ramble. That first vine that climbed a nearby trellis grew to the top and all around it and then trailed back down. Other vines crossed a pathway, wrestled up sunchoke stalks and mixed in with grapevines along the top of a fence. Vines in the other direction also climbed among and over all their neighbors. Dozens of bright green three-lobed starts sprang up in the original bed, too many to abide so out they came, yet when pulled they snapped leaving sturdy roots below.
I recently read about a family that bought property in the maypop native zone who were delighted to find a couple plants in a clearing in their woods. Soon enough, to their delight, maypop vines blanketed the open space with no intention of relenting. Maypops don’t stop. This family happily collected ripe fruit and made jelly.
Some folks are handy jelly-makers. There will be no maypop jelly for me this year. I had a dozen green fruit slightly larger than a ping pong ball appear this summer among the maypop mayhem, but they made a meager harvest. Nevertheless, I can count on those underground roots singing folk songs all winter waiting for another warm season. I’ll get my chance for maypop jam, like it or not. The roots live here now unless I hire excavators to find and remove them all.
And exotic flowers notwithstanding, maypops are tough plants that can withstand difficult soil and weather conditions. They grow in roadside ditches. I dug up healthy root pieces six inches long which would be excited to settle down and start new families somewhere, so I should be careful where I dispose of them.
To get ready for next year’s maypop challenge, the management team and I are preparing a plan. We intend to limit how many bright green three-lobed starts become here-to-eternity vines by respectfully removing most of them and the root pieces from which they came. This will be an ongoing challenge. This morning I found maypop starts fifteen feet downhill from the original site. What will my crew find next year?
Regardless, we intend to try professional-grade grape-trellising strategy to select maypop vines. More flowers mean more fruit, so soil preparation with adequate P and K is the plan. The plenteous fruit will be used for jams and juices, and all will be right with the world.
Maypop leaves are an important food source for larva of several kinds of butterflies but not for humans, so leave them for butterflies. The flowers attract bees, butterflies and maybe even hummingbirds, and the fruits attract folks who know how to make jam.