Passion Flower Probs

Heya, first post here and am hoping someone may be able to help out please.

I'm rather new to the gardening world and pretty much learning as I go along. I planted a passionflower in a larghe trough against a south facing wall of my house earlier this year. It has grown wonderfully, reaching around 7-8FT high and probably the same in width. The flowers were splendid although i missed the best as I was on holiday. It then fruited, lots of large green fruit, which then turned to orange, went mushy and shrivled up. It is still doing the fruiting.shrivling thing now.

The problem is that the leaves have all started to wilt, turn yellow and die from the ground upwards and at some of the tips, although at tips it's more wilting. The stem has sort of 'split', almost like it has swollen and burst, the burst part shows a light colour and seems to harden off.

Is this normal? If it isn't then please could someone offer some advice as to a cure?

 

I wonder if it's suffered to much water ClareB.
Trunk splitting is common in trees when they get to much water after a dry spell.
They draw it up to quickly and this causes splitting of trunks.
This may have happened here with your passionflower.
The leaves shrivelling and dying is an additional symptom.
If it's not any of the above, which it may not be, maybe it's disease related.
How big is the trough that it's in?
This could be another factor. To small for the size of the plant?

 

could you post a photo, It isnt normal im afraid.

 

Hi they are planted best in the ground, and depending which passion fruit it is you can't eat the orange fruit of the cerulea or how ever you spell it! the edible one is the Endulis. They are also semi evergreen depending on the weather in your area.

 

I have one doing something very similar in the greenhouse, (purple passion).

I've taken some tip ans stem cuttings as I think its got some kind of neck rot at ground level.
Probably due to the dull lousy summer.

 

They are best grown in the ground because of the thick stems that occur over the years.I have had passion flower growing at the front and still have at the back of the house with no worries for about twenty years and they should be quite resilient.The minimal stunting of growth in the trough and over-watering are probably the cause of your problems and both,of course,lend themselves to disease in restricted areas.If you are lucky,you may get some seedlings shoot up.I have uprooted and thrown quite a lot away ,so do persevere as they are generally an easy plant to grow.