Harvesting Passion Flower

I’ve usually purchased dried herbs for making tinctures but I now have mature Blue Passion flower and eucalyptus at my new place. How do I harvest Passion flower? Do I just cut and dry the flowers when open or use them fresh in a tincture? Do you harvest the leaves? Obviously depending on use but I’m looking for medicinal use right now. I’m reading as many books that I can but also Curious if anyone have here has harvested fresh. Thanks!

This is an article about dehydrating herbs. The author describes tying them in a bundle and air drying them, using the oven, and using an electric dehydrator.

I live in the humid midsouth. I can't just tie up my herbs and hang them. Everything molds. So I found a fourth way to do it. I lay them out in the greenhouse in a single layer to dry. It takes one to two days.

For passionflower vines, I have rolled the vines up like a hose, or a vine wreath. Be sure to keep it loose, so there is plenty of air flow. Once the vine is dehydrated, it can be cut or broken up in smallish pieces and store until needed.

CAUTION
However, please be aware of the variety of passionflower you have before using it. Most literature I have seen has specified Passiflora incarnata. This is the one that is native to the USA. Some of the other cultivars can do some bad damage to you. Please be careful.

[quote=

CAUTION
However, please be aware of the variety of passionflower you have before using it. Most literature I have seen has specified Passiflora incarnata. This is the one that is native to the USA. Some of the other cultivars can do some bad damage to you. Please be careful.

How can you tell the difference? I absolutely do not know since I didn’t plant it. It looks like the right kind but now I’m not sure.

Oh crap. How to describe... (runs off into the interwebs)

Oooh! Awesome! Green Deane did a write-up on it. I live in USDA zone 7. The plants die back to the ground every year here. It looks like in Florida it may only loose the leaves.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:Oh crap. How to describe... (runs off into the interwebs)

Oooh! Awesome! Green Deane did a write-up on it. I live in USDA zone 7. The plants die back to the ground every year here. It looks like in Florida it may only loose the leaves.

Passiflora caerulea Is what my plant ID app says.

Hmmm... Please note that I am but a kitchen herbalist. Also note that I NEVER use Wikipedia as a definitive source of info on any herb. Sure, a jump off point for further research, yes. Lots of further research. Then some more. Here, is what Wikipedia says. So, maybe a tea would work from your Passiflora species.

Betty Garnett wrote:

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:Oh crap. How to describe... (runs off into the interwebs)

Oooh! Awesome! Green Deane did a write-up on it. I live in USDA zone 7. The plants die back to the ground every year here. It looks like in Florida it may only loose the leaves.

Passiflora caerulea Is what my plant ID app says.

Please, don't ever rely on just one app, for plant ID. I've not found even one of them without many gross inaccuracies. The problem is that they're pretty much all regional, and a frightening percentage of them rely too heavily on their user's input - much like Wikipedia. In fact, I've pretty much given up on the apps, in favor of reputable, professional horticulturist and/or good botany books, like Botany in a Day.

Would anyone be selling dried leaves? I'd love to get a few pounds.
Thank you!
~Honey

Passiflora Incarnata is the most commonly used for tea but there are people that use Caerulea's flowers to make tea too here is link to  a Doctor on you tube that shows you how to make tea's and tinctures from the two different species of passiflora
https://youtu.be/B4X5U9yOSOY?si=n8AH8A-MvMTFjCFq