Passion Vine

I began my native landscape design class with the National Wildlife Federation this week. I'm slowly learning about drought tolerant plants for central Texas. The Passion Vine is beautiful deciduous perennial, which provides food for several species of butterfly larva. It likes sun to part shade. It blooms in early spring to summer. Once it is established, the Passion Vine only requires water every three weeks. Be careful because it's a vigorous vine, which can reach up to 15 feet. In Spain, it is known as the espina de Cristo or Christ's Thorn. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries adopted the unique physical structures of this plant, particularly the numbers of its various flower parts, as symbols of the last days of Jesus Christ and especially the Crucifixion.