| Description | Purple Passion Plant (Gynura aurantiaca) is an easy plant to grow. Likes bright light to deepen the purple color of the fuzzy leaves. Watch out for the odoriferous orange flowers, especially when you pinch them off. |
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| Pronunciation | (gee-NOOR-ah)(sar-MEN-toe-sa) |
| Plant Type | Indoor Foliage, Perennial Tender, Tropical herbaceous plants |
| Hardiness Zone | 10 |
| Sunlight | prefers bright light, in lower light conditions the plants color will become greener |
| Moisture | evenly moist |
| Growing Media | average house |
| Temperature | average house |
| Flowers | buds open into small, unpleasant-smelling orange flowers; pinch off the buds before they flower. |
| Fruit | seeds formed in a fluffy mass |
| Leaves | dark green, covered with a dense growth of purple fuzz (pubescence) |
| Roots | fiborous |
| Dimensions | The plant starts off as a small compact plant but quickly turns into a vine. The less light this plant receives the farther apart the internodes. |
| Maintenance | It will become scraggly looking and needs to be pruned back. Not only will this improve the compactness of the plant it promotes new, fresh, purple growth. |
| Propagation | easy from cuttings |
| Native Site | Indonesia |
| Misc Facts | There seems to be confusion about which Gynura is which. Always called my plants G. sarmentosa because they were trailing. Where as G. aurantiaca as a more upright growing plant, with less purple color. Sarmentosa means with long flexible runners. |
| Author's Notes | For a joke, I assigned a group of my horticulture students the task of pinching the flowers off a group of large hanging baskets. Their fingers smelled pretty bad and were not happy with me! This plant is very pettable it feels like velvet. Will develop a thick coat of purple hair if the conditions are right. |
| Notes & Reference | #144-Missouri Botanical Gardens website (www.missouribotanicalgarden.org), #158-Plantepedia (Maggie Stuckey), #274-Site Authors' observations and growing experiences |
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