A Passion for Flowers

I thought I loved passionflowers – the family Passifloraceae. I still do, but after getting comments on my  photos posted to Flickr, I realized there are others who are quite a bit more fanatical about them. Thanks to these experts, I've been able to put names to many of these beauties.

These are from my recent tour to Costa Rica.

In the Talamanca Highlands was this amazing vine, drooping down from a Costa Rican Oak. It is Passiflora membranacea, which I should have recognized, having seen in growing in the highlands of Oaxaca just over a year ago.

This one from the Osa Peninsula is a bit harder to confirm, given that I didn't take photos of the leaves. But at least on the La Selva flora website the only match is Passiflora vitifolia. Given that that species also occurs into Panama and NW South America, that's probably also what this one is, but I suppose it's also possible that the Osa Peninsula has its own species. Deep in the understory of the rain forest, this one attracts trap-lining hermits.

Finally, this adorable one was on the entrance road to our lodge near La Selva, Sueño Azul. It's a good match for Passiflora biflora on the La Selva flora website (which should pretty much share everything with this property), but there's also the very similar P. nubicola which could cause confusion; I suspect that one is found at higher elevations.