Introduction

Originally from the Andes Mountains of South America, the woody vine Passiflora mollissima (HBK) Bailey (Passifloraceae) (banana passion fruit) has been widely disseminated through the world as an ornamental for its large, showy trumpet-shaped flower and large elongate yellow fruit (Fig. 16.1) (Vanderplank, 1991). It is referred to as curubra or tumbo in South America, and as banana poka in Hawaii; poka being a Hawaiian word for twine or twisting. Disseminated by fruit-feeding birds, it has become feral in many semitropical areas of the world, including the island of Madeira in the North Atlantic, in southern Africa (MacDonald, 1987; Henderson, 1995), Kenya (De Wilde, 1976), New Zealand (Young, 1970), and the Hawaiian Islands in the central Pacific.

Introduced as an ornamental vine to the island of Kauai in Hawaii in the 1890s, it was moved to the Island of Hawaii in 1932, and subsequently to the island of Maui. On all three islands it found the mid-elevation (500–2200 m) mountain rain forest (Cuddihy, 1989) an ideal habitat and the introduced birds and feral pigs effective means for dissemination of its seeds. By the mid 1970s, its ability to invade the Hawaiian rain forests and form dense mats of vines that smothered understory plants and broke down mature trees led it to be recognized as a threat to the continued survival of Hawaiian rain forests (Beardsley and Smith, 1978; Waage et al., 1981; Warshauer et al., 1983; LaRosa, 1984).