My Incense is about three years old, and enormous with many, many flowers. A younger sucker around the side of the house is quite large and flowery as well. This is the first year I've tried to pollinate it, only now having two flowering incarnata (my caerulea and caerulea "Constance Elliott" planted this spring, haven't flowered yet). Thus far I've had no successful pollination attempts.

Interestingly enough, my in-laws, who originally gave me my Incense rooted suckers, have had Incense growing at their house for 8 years or so. They've *never* tried to hand-pollinate, but have had small fruit form on occasion. There are wild incarnata growing around them, so bees or wasps are pollinating the Incense naturally. Go figure. The age of the Incense may indeed play a factor.

I suspect there are several reasons for this, the main one being that I commute to work, and have only been able to hand pollinate late in the evening. Your "maturity" theory may be valid--the younger and smaller of the two incarnata has very small ovaries and has yet to set any fruit when hand-pollinated, although the larger one is fruiting readily. I'm going to keep trying and see what happens--I've also got my Lady Margaret about to bloom, so I'm going to attempt a back cross with an incense as well.

I have 4 incense,first year in ground,with constance elliott,carerula,and incarnata,growing and flowering profusley
near by,and among the incense,haven't tried any hand pollinating the incense,but have the others,with no sucess,but have a few incarnata's with fruit.
I'm waiting for the morifolas to come into bloom and will try with them.Also blooming at this time is vitifolia and bifolia,and occasionaly alto caerula,still waitng for blooms on lavender lady ,Lady Margaret and Edulis.

I have 4 incense,first year in ground,with constance elliott,carerula,and incarnata,growing and flowering profusley
near by,and among the incense,haven't tried any hand pollinating the incense,but have the others,with no sucess,but have a few incarnata's with fruit.
I'm waiting for the morifolas to come into bloom and will try with them.Also blooming at this time is vitifolia and bifolia,and occasionaly alto caerula,still waitng for blooms on lavender lady ,Lady Margaret and Edulis.

I pollenated Incense with Incarnata last summer and I was successful getting a single fruit to form. I had to bring the plant indoors (though from what I read it might be hardy enough to remain outdoors). before the fruit was fully ripe. I opened the fruit after a month inside and there were some seed within. I stored them for a couple months and finally tried sprouting them (along with some other incarnata and cerulea). I had no luck getting any of them to sprout (but I did have a problem with a cat digging in some of the seedling cells, including I suspect the incarnata-incense seed cells).

I will try again this year, but I will not store the seed at all, I will harvest and plant the seed immediately should another fruit form.

My Incense does have an interesting problem, though. Each year a portion of the plant has its leaves yellow significantly (the yellowing portions are always round, weird, huh). The leaves do not seem otherwise damaged and do not fall off or further degenerate. Any ideas?

~Chills

Chills, that yellowing is the result of a latent virus present in all Incense clones. It appears when the plant is stressed, but is otherwise harmless.

Chills,

Did you stratify the seeds? I read a report recently where someone tested the germination of incarnata seeds, and the ones from warmer areas germinated immediately, but those from colder areas required cold stratification. Since Incense is half incarnata, the seeds may need stratifying.

Last year, a kind gardenwebber sent me some Incense fruits. There were 30 dark heavy seeds present. I stratified them for a couple of months in the refrigerator, then moved them to room temp. Only 8 germinated, over a period of several weeks. Of these, only 3 were healthy and vigorous enough to transplant outdoors. Two of them immediately developed severe viral problems, becoming very yellow and chlorotic. The third is doing well and has tiny flower buds now, but none have shown signs of developing into larger buds so far. The pollen parent is unknown, but possibly is caerulea. Another interesting thing about this plant is that red spider mites will not get near it. I had an outbreak of them and they covered all the others and caused a lot of problems, but I never saw one on this one seedling, even though it was touching plants that were covered with them.

I store seeds in the refrigerator. They were in there for a couple months. I soaked the seeds in water with a very dilute mix of fish emulsion. (seeds which floated were thrown away).

Germination on both the incarnata and incarnata X Incense were poor (due to the cell-packs being disturbed I would suspect)

Spidermites seem to like Incense more than other varieties of passion flowers. I have had Vitifolia, Lavender Lady, Edulis, Incarnata and Incense in the same room (many of them growing together) and the most severe infestations always appear on Incense.

For those interested, I have found a systemic that doesn't seem to harm Incense, but does seem to stem the mites damage. I will dig it out of the cabinet and post the name if anyone is interested. Systemic toxins will make the fruit toxic, though, so using the product will mean that one cannot sample the fruit (if one is inclined to do so). I only use it on the Incense, myself.

~Chills

As far as the virus, I find it interesting that my worst occurrances of it seem to occur when I first take the plant outside each year. Maybe the plant finds the fluxes in temperature, the raised humidity and light to be stressing.

Thought I would post an update. My Incense set one fruit all summer long that really took, after maybe 100+ hand-pollinations. The ovary would swell on about 1 in 4, but the fruit would drop off after a few days. However, over the past 2-3 weeks, it has set 7 more fruit. The same incarnata pollen was used the whole time. All the other incarnatas were cut down when our hay was cut, so there are no others blooming nearby. Not sure if these will ripen in time, but at least I'm getting some fruit now.

~kiwinut

Good luck with those fruit, kiwinut! I haven't had any fruit set on my Incense. Maybe it's still too young. The cats are starting to nosh on it pretty hard, so I'll probably wait 'til next year to try again.