Transcription
In this video, I'm going to show you how to forage and use purple passion flower, a common wild plant that, in my opinion, is one of the best if you are feeling anxious or overworked. And if you never feel that way, well, first, please write a comment to let me and everyone else know what your secret is. But even then, there is so much more to passion flower that everyone, everyone should be excited about.
By the end of this video, you will know exactly how to find it and distinguish it from close look-alikes. Plus, I'm going to show you exactly how I use it. I'll cover precautions that you should know, and so much more. Anyone can do this. Anyone can work with this amazing wild plant. It is very simple, but really quick. I'll go ahead and mention that if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, passion flower is not something that you should be consuming. Okay, with that, my name is Jesse. This is Feral Foraging. Let's get started.
So first, what I want to do is I want to prove to you that passion flower is worth your time. And I'm going to back this up with both historical text and modern studies, as well as my own extensive experience using and eating, yes, eating passion flower. And by the way, when I say passion flower, I don't just mean the flowers alone. More on that a little bit later, like we'll definitely be talking about these fruits as well.
If you look back through old 18th and 19th century herbal textbooks, like King's American Dispensatory, you will immediately find many mentions of passion flower being used for anxiety. They particularly mention that it works, works well for sleeplessness or restlessness that is caused by worry, which I think makes it a particularly well-suited herb for the modern world. Another interesting application of passion flower was for fatigue that was caused by excessive coughing. This was mentioned in several of the texts.
But I still wanted to know what the underlying chemicals may be that are responsible for the recorded effects of passion flower, as well as if there are any modern clinical studies that have been done on it. Thankfully, passion flower is a well-studied herb. In terms of the chemistry, passion flower is rich in beneficial chemicals: flavonoids like apigenin and chrysin, which are associated with sedative effects and activate GABA receptors; harman alkaloids, which are known to have monoamine oxidase inhibitory activity, but you may know of that as an MAOI; and then other flavones like vitexin or isovitexin, also associated with anxiolytic activity. So things are, they're looking pretty good so far. The chemistry supports the purported uses.
But what about clinical studies? Again, we can find several well-designed, double-blinded, and placebo-controlled studies showing passion flower to help with alleviating pre-operative anxiety, to work comparatively well to pharmaceutical anxiety drugs with fewer side effects, to improve sleep quality, and more. It really is an incredible herb. And all that's going to cost you is time spent out in nature, moving your body, and and getting fresh air, which honestly, for me, that is my personal favorite anxiolytic.
My personal experience with passion flower corroborates all of these findings that we've explored so far as well. Before I show you how I use it, it is important to understand what exactly we mean when we say passion flower. There are many hundreds of different species of passion flower. They're all in the genus Passiflora. And the one that I'm covering in this video specifically is Passiflora incarnata. It is native to eastern North America and goes by many different names. You'll hear it called passion flower, you'll hear it called passion vine, but many of you will recognize it by its name, "mop," which comes from the fact that the fruit, right here, will make a popping noise when you step on it.
And yes, this plant does produce fruit, and it is amazing. It's a passion flower, so would that make the fruit passion fruit? Kind of. But this one isn't the same as what you would get from the grocery store, which comes from the tropical species Passiflora edulis. Personally, though, I call the fruit of this wild species passion fruit as well. The taste to me is a little bit more tart than the grocery store one, but it is still truly incredible. You just need to make sure that you're getting them when they're fully ripe, but we'll cover that a little bit more in a future video. These ones right here, they're not quite ready yet.
I really want to show you an edible use of the plant that crosses over into the medicinal realm, because I'm a believer in the idea of letting your medicine be your food. This is a big thing that you may not have heard about before, but you can actually cook the leaves, the young shoots, even the flowers, and prepare them as something like a green for the plate. I found that the young leaves work really well, but even they weren't the best part. I tested this at this time of the year where the plants are a lot older, and I found that the vines were a little bit too tough. But even these young leaves right here that are tender, they worked perfectly. When the plants are first shooting up in the spring, I would bet that all the above-ground parts could be used.
So at this stage, I remove the leaves from the rest of the vine and I'll add them to a pot of boiling water and blanch them for 30 seconds to a minute or so, and then I'll remove them, and that's it. They are ready to go. I'm telling you, I was shocked at how good the flavor was. To me, it kind of had a green bean flavor, but it was a bit sweeter, and the texture was good too, very tender. But the leaves weren't even close to the sweetness that you get from the flowers. This was something I was not expecting. They were seriously delicious. They had a bit of a nice crunch to them, which enhanced the texture even more. A similar flavor to the leaves, just way sweeter. Personally, though, I would rather eat the ripe fruits than the flowers, which are very healthy as well, by the way. So if I'm gathering them from a far away remote location, then I might get some of the flowers. But these ones that are growing near me, I'm definitely waiting on them to turn into passion fruit.
And that water that you got from blanching the fresh leaves, don't discard that. Now you have a really nice passion flower tea to go with your meal. Just don't make the mistake that I did of salting your water, which I often do with blanching first. That will not be a very good tasting tea.
So now let's delve further into specific medicinal applications and preparations of passion flower. I use all of the above-ground parts with passion flower. Gathering the vines is very easy. I usually look for plants that don't have a lot of flowers or fruits growing on them, and I just give them a light tug, which should separate that from the main part of the vine. Passion flower is a pretty hearty plant and a relatively aggressive grower, so overharvesting isn't the greatest amount of concern with this one. But still, I do my best to minimize the impact and maximize the fruits that a vine would be able to produce close to me or in the wild.
A quick aside: it is a native plant and it supports an array of native insects. I never find these without tons of bumblebees gathering the pollen from them. And you also might come across the Gulf Fritillary butterflies and caterpillars, which only eat this plant. They may look really menacing, but they're actually completely safe to touch. If you get these growing on your vines, they will absolutely go to town on them. But in my experience, the fruit has plenty of time to mature and become ripe before the caterpillars get to them. You don't need to remove them.
Okay, so once you've gathered them, you can use them immediately to make fresh tea, or you can dry them to store and use long-term. Passion flower dries really well. You can use a dehydrator if you want to make it faster, but if you don't have one, you can just leave it out in a nice area that gets good airflow. I find that the leaves dry much easier than the stems, so I run my hands from the end of the stem to the base to quickly separate the leaves. It's very easy, and it's also a lot of fun. Once it has all dried, I'll just rub the leaves between my hands over a large bowl to break everything up so I can easily fit them into a jar for storage.
I like to consume passion flower as a tea. For testing for this video, I used about a gram and a half of passion flower, and then I poured over boiling water with roughly triple the amount of water added. And I'll leave that to steep for about 10 to 20 minutes. And for reference, this is what about a gram and a half of dried passion flower leaves looks like. After that's all done, I will strain off the herb, and that's all that there is to it. Now you can enjoy your passion flower tea. I'll be honest, the flavor is not my favorite in the world for tea. It works great for a vegetable, but not as a tea, in my opinion. But you know, I don't really drink it for the taste anyway.
You can make a tincture with alcohol if you'd like, but personally, I'm not the biggest fan of tinctures myself. But I will show you a quick trick that you can use for passion flower and other herbs. Pull up the herb that you're looking for on Herb Farm, and then you can find the ratios and what parts that they were using, and then you can just replicate that. Now, in my experience with taking passion flower, this isn't something that you can just chug right before bed that will quickly put you to sleep. The only thing that I've had that's actually done that is wild lettuce. What I found with passion flower is that it just kind of lowered my overall level of worry and jumpiness. Like I found it to just be a really helpful way to calm down, to chill out, and to be able to focus. Honestly, it's allowed me to do more work and be less stressed, which is great, 'cause that means I can make more videos for all of you. Overall, for me, I just really found it to be extremely helpful. I feel reminded how incredible that this wild herb is, and I'm just honestly, I'm really thankful for it.
So now let's talk a little bit about dosing. Like I said, I had about 1.5 grams per day, and I had that for 5 days in a row when I was working on experiments for this video. I didn't experience any negative side effects from that. According to the NIH, passion flower has been taken in amounts of 800 milligrams, so about half of what I did, per day for 14 days without significant side effects for most people. That being said, some people do experience nausea from consuming passion flower, and if that's you, it's probably not a good idea to continue. And whenever you're trying any new wild food or herb, I always recommend have a small amount before consuming more. I would also advise you to just kind of, you know, pay attention to your body and see how things are feeling if you're consuming it for longer. If things are off, don't push it, don't continue.
The last bit of safety information is that if you are taking other medications for conditions like anxiety, or depression, or insomnia, it's probably best to avoid taking passion flower at the same time as them, as they could have unintended interactions or effects. But just to be clear, this is not medical advice. This is all just general education. If you have questions about this kind of thing specifically, it would be best to talk with a medical professional.
All right, now the final piece of the puzzle for you is to be able to find passion flower and distinguish it from its look-alikes. Here's where a lot of people make a very common beginner foraging mistake. All right, if it gets really sunny for this part, I don't even care. It'll just drive the point home, which is that passion flower likes to grow in open, sunny areas. You are not going to find this wild plant growing deep in the woods. That is one of the worst places to look for it. The ideal location, in my experience, is shrubby forest edges. Here, the plants are going to have plenty of foliage to climb and lots of sun to produce flowers and fruits with. When the plant is flowering, that is the best time to find and use it. It's just going to jump out at you across the landscape. I have detailed timing for when the plant emerges, flowers, and fruits in my interactive forager's calendar. You can scan the QR code on the screen or check the description for that.
Okay, so what about the range? Where are we going to find it in the world? Here's a map for it on iNaturalist, where you can see that it is prominently found all across Central and Eastern North America. Now, if you don't see your location in the range here, don't worry. There are two other options for you. Number one, you could grow it. Passion flower grows quite well in zones 5 through 9. They are extremely hardy, they are easy to grow, and they benefit both you and your local ecology. It's a big win-win. When I process the fruits later in the year, I naturally end up with a ton of extra seeds, which is something that might pop up in one of my wild seed drops, so look out for a community post on that in the future. But I'll leave a link for where you can find the seeds anytime in the description.
And if that isn't an option, you can also try out various passion flower products. They may be more common than you think. Chances are, a lot of the sleepy time teas that you can get right from the grocery store near you have passion flower in them as one of the main ingredients. I've linked to various passion flower products from what I consider to be reputable brands in the description and YouTube shopping right here.
So now let's talk about foraging for it for those of you that do live where it grows wild. Here's everything that you need to know. Passion flower shoots and leaves will emerge far before the flowers do, so if you know how to recognize them by that, you'll have a much larger window of time to scout for them. However, there is a very important plant with extremely similar leaves that you should be aware of. Here they are, side by side. You can see how similar they are to each other. The leaves of passion flower have three distinct lobes on them. I've always thought of them of having like a dinosaur footprint-like leaves, and they also have a serrate or a jagged edge. And at the base of them, they have these two peculiar dots that are called extrafloral nectaries. These are used to attract beneficial insects to the plant before the flowers have even emerged. You will often see ants crawling all over them if you look closely.
Okay, remember this next part. It's very important. Passion flower has alternating leaves. They don't come off at the same point along the stem. This will immediately distinguish it from the look-alike, which is called ragweed. Ragweed has leaves that are oppositely arranged. They do come off at the same point along the stem. In addition, ragweed grows upright versus the crawling, climbing vine of passion flower.
Passion flower flowers are extremely distinctive. The only one that I can think of that kind of looks like it that also grows near it would be yellow passion flower, Passiflora lutea, but those flowers are going to be much, much smaller than purple passion flower, and the leaves don't have sharp points on them, they're softly lobed. Then we have the unopened flower pods. Those are also quite iconic, and to me, they have always kind of looked like little green sea anemones. But recognizing this plant by its flowers is by far the easiest, which is why I recommend waiting for the flowering window for beginners. All of that is on my forager's calendar.
The fruits as well, in its range, I can't think of another plant that looks anything like them. The only one again would be yellow passion fruit, but they are way, way smaller. Remember, we're going to look at the fruit a lot more in a future video. Once they have become ripe, it'll be in the pinned comment when it's completed. But for now, there is another wild plant that many people talk about using for anxiety called mimosa tree. If you are interested in foraging for mimosa tree, there is a little-known but very important precaution question that I think you should know about, which I discuss in detail in this video right here. I really think it's going to be helpful for you, and I hope to see you there.