Pinching out passiflora seedlings?

Greetings all,

I have a number of passiflora seedlings and I'm curious as to whether passion flowers respond to pinching out the growing tip. A passiflora vitifolia and passiflora caerulea are approx. 14" high - I'm very happy to let them continue on their merry journey upwards but also interested if they'd branch if pinched, though since I've only one of each don't want them to come to an harm!! Any info greatly appreciated.

 

I'd not bother, they usually dont want to branch at that stage, so you just slow down growth while a new shoot is forming.
Train the stem upwards and at about 6ft let it hang down.
It quite often forces them into a few flowers and also once the top loses support it fans out and branches.
Vitifolia is a good one , needs a bit of heat though, not grown it myself.

 

Thanks Pete, great to find a fellow passiflora enthusiast. Of all the passion flowers I'm growing, vitifolia probably has the nicest growth habit at this stage. While the quadrangularis and alata, for instance, look disproportionate with giant leaves for their height, vitifolia looks perfectly in proportion. Also, once matured its supposed to flower all year round in Britain, with those wonderful scarlet blooms. The slightly odd thing is it continuously sheds its lower leaves as new ones are formed (unlike my other species) so it only has around 4/5 leaves at any one time, but thankfully doesn't seem to do it any harm, just seems to be its natural habit.

 

It doesn't sound right to be shedding leaves that fast.
It could be the time of year as the light levels are only really just getting to good growing times.
Where are you growing them?
Just interested as to get vitifolia to flower all year round might not be that easy without some real warmth.

 

It's growing in a warm, bright, south-facing living room so plenty of heat, though probably not the humidity it would ideally like. As for light levels, it gets natural light all day though not in direct sunlight (but must admit it was in strong direct light for a few days I was away which may have scorched the leaves and account for some of the shedding), and additional artificial light in the evenings provided by a nearby lamp.

Have you ever grown passiflora foetida? The pink variety looks wonderful and would like to know how difficult it is.