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Cellpic Sunday—Banana Passionfruit

Banana Passionfruit

May 2025.
Kalaheo, Hawaii.

We found this beautiful flowering plant on a nearby fence. I didn’t know the beautiful flowers hid a darker secret. The striking white, star-shaped flowers are characteristic of Passiflora tarminiana, commonly known as Banana Passionfruit or Banana Poka. These attractive blooms often display a delicate pale pink to white hue. As you can see in the photo above, the plant features a distinctive, long, floral tube and grows on vigorous, fast-climbing vines.

Banana Passionfruit
Immature passionfruit

The plant produces elongated, banana-shaped fruits that are highly distinctive, typically measuring 3 to 5 inches (7.6-12.7 cm) in length. When young, they often appear greenish-purple, maturing to a vibrant yellow or orange.

While visually appealing with its beautiful blossoms and edible fruits, the banana passionfruit poses a significant environmental threat in Hawaii. According to Google AI, “Originally from the Andean cloud forests of South America, this plant is considered a highly aggressive invasive species across the islands. It forms dense, fast-growing mats of vines that can rapidly smother native vegetation, climbing high into forest canopies and severely impacting local biodiversity.” Its prolific growth and ability to quickly colonize disturbed areas make it a primary ecological concern in the Hawaiian ecosystem.

About the photos: Captured on my Samsung S23U on our last full day on Kauai, I hadn’t noticed the growing fruits before; I had only seen the beautiful flowers. I quickly captured two images of the plant and uploaded them to Adobe Lightroom Classic to catalog and start processing. Since the files are JPEG, I couldn’t run them through Lightroom’s Denoise function, something I commonly do with RAW files. Fortunately, the low ISO images didn’t display noticeable noise at the exposures chosen. I then cropped the photos to focus on the subjects.

I sent them both to Luminar Neo to use the new Auto-Adjust feature in the Develop module and then ran them through Enhanced AI before sending them back to Lightroom. Since the photo of the fruit hanging down was almost at ground level and there was only a block fence behind it, I used Lightroom’s strong blur preset to isolate the fruit from the wall. You can view both of these images in 2K HD on my Flickr site here.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never assign a specific theme to this feature—the primary rule is that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or other mobile device. The second rule: link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post. Oh, and there’s no penalty if you don’t post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

32 comments

  6. At least the fruits are edible! In India, we have the invasion of water hyacinths, in the freshwater systems, which were introduced by the Brits as ornamental plants there. They block waterways and negatively impact the aquatic ecosystem. When I see them infesting ponds all across India, they appear like eyesores, far from ornamental.
    Anyhow, here’s my entry for today:

    Wheel

    Reply

  7. […] This is where I was at 4 PM, and it looked like this in Espoo, Finland. The sun was beginning to set, casting a warm glow over the landscape, just a moment after some rain had fallen. The clouds hung low, creating a dramatic backdrop against the richly colored sky. It was a moment quickly passed, capturing the beauty of nature as the day transitioned to night. Posted for John’s Cellpic Sunday. […]

    Reply

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