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The following HTML text is provided to enhance online readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML. Please use the page image as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy. Page 293 At present this fruit has one drawback: the often tough rind can frustrate consumers. Research to select and propagate easy-opening varieties would do much to advance this species. Also, hybridization—for example, with its close relative P. serrulata, which has a papery pericarp—may provide a new fruit with a thinner rind. Rosy Passionfruit. In Bogotá, another well-known passionfruit is Passiflora cumbalensis. 13 This banana-shaped “curuba bogotana” is much like the true curuba (Passiflora mollissima, see above), but it has a bright, attractive, red skin. 14 Its aromatic, mildly biting orange flesh is used to flavor drinks, ice cream, yogurt, or other products. Some judge the fruit to be inferior to selected strains of P. mollissima, but it still is of sufficient quality to place the fruits in local markets and supermarkets. Selecting improved varieties could likely boost its acceptance even more. The rosy passionfruit is fairly widespread in the northern Andes 15 but is most extensively cultivated in the central and eastern mountains of Colombia, especially in the Department of Cundinamarca. It grows naturally from 1,800 to more than 3,000 m throughout Colombia and into northern Ecuador. It seems to hybridize with other varieties as well as with P. mixta. Hybridizations have also been effected between the rosy passionfruit and the curuba itself, and this line of research seems particularly promising. In fact, hybridization is a promising road to valuable new fruits among many of the different passionfruit species. It might, for instance, lead to much larger fruits and maybe even to seedless ones. Related Species. 16 Exploratory research might also include other wild Andean passionfruits, some of which are mentioned below. Passiflora schlimiana This species grows from 2,000–3,500 m in the Sierra Nevada of Colombia. The juice, said to taste like blackberry juice, is used to prepare sherbets and jams. The fruits are yellow and measure up to 12 cm long. Although now hardly known, this is an unusual species much deserving of research.
13 It was until recently considered a separate species, Passiflora goudotiana. Now it is considered P. cumbalensis var. goudotiana. Escobar, 1987.
14 This fruit, which we have termed the “rosy passionfruit,” currently has no common name in English.
15 Seven varieties of P. cumbalensis can be found from northern Colombia to southcentral Peru in cool to cold areas between about 1,800 and 4,100 m. Other common names for the species include taxo, tauso, and gulian in Ecuador, and puru puru in Peru. The variety found in the Bogotá area is considered the best of the species.
16 Information from M. Tapia and L. de Escobar.
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