Passiflora Caerulea

We have all kinds of strange weed-y vines growing in parts of our yard. There's one area on the side of the house that has some tall bushes, and vines have grown up through them. Rick initially thought it was Virginia Creeper. Well a couple months ago one of the vines started blooming and Rick commented, I didn't think Virginina Creeper bloomed... When I first noticed it had flowers, I saw one through our bedroom window I couldn't tell it was a flower from a distance. It looked like some kind of weird bug! Which is not uncommon in Florida, so I went to check it out & I was surpised to see it was a flower.
They were very bizarre! Almost exotic & tropical.But things have been hectic & busy so we haven't paid much more attention to it.
Yesterday evening we were walking the yard to survey any storm damage and I got to looking at the blooms on the vine again, and I said to Rick, You know.. these flowers really are pretty! I wonder what they are?

I took a couple really pretty pictures of the flower which I will upload at a later date. Since I am house-bound today because of the storm, curiosity got the better of me & I decided to find out what the heck was growing in my yard.

I did a Google image search for "purple & white flower". And sure enough, not very far into the search results, I was able to find a web page with a picture of our funky flower. It is...

Passion vine! Passiflora Caerulea.
(These are not the pictures I took but our flowers look EXACTLY the same!)







http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passiflora_caerulea

I wonder how it made it's way into our yard? But it is really neat looking! So we are going to let it stay. Apparently it will make little passion fruits that are edible, and the flowers can be used for tea.