Passiflora lutea is a flowering plant

Flowering plant

The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...

 in the family Passifloraceae

Passifloraceae

Passifloraceae is a family of flowering plants, containing about 530 species classified in around 18 genera. They include trees, shrubs, lianas and climbing plants, and are mostly found in tropical regions....

, native North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, in the eastern and south-central parts of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 from Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 west to Kansas

Kansas

Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...

, and south to Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 and Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

. It is the northernmost species of Passiflora, occurring slightly further north than P. incarnata

Passiflora incarnata

Passiflora incarnata, commonly known as maypop, purple passionflower, true passionflower, wild apricot, and wild passion vine, is a fast growing perennial vine with climbing or trailing stems. A member of the passionflower genus Passiflora, the maypop has large, intricate flowers with prominent...

, and tolerant of winter temperatures down to −15 °C, and even −30 °C for short periods.

It is a perennial

Perennial plant

A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. The term is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter lived annuals and biennials. The term is sometimes misused by commercial gardeners or horticulturalists to describe only herbaceous perennials...

 herbaceous

Herbaceous

A herbaceous plant is a plant that has leaves and stems that die down at the end of the growing season to the soil level. They have no persistent woody stem above ground...

 climbing or trailing vine

Vine

A vine in the narrowest sense is the grapevine , but more generally it can refer to any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent, that is to say climbing, stems or runners...

 that can reach 3-5 m in length. The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are trilobed, 3-7 cm long and 3-15 cm broad, with a 5 cm petiole; in the north of its range, it is deciduous

Deciduous

Deciduous means "falling off at maturity" or "tending to fall off", and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally, and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe...

. The common name as well as the scientific name refers to the small, 1-1.5 cm diameter chartreuse

Chartreuse (color)

Chartreuse is a color halfway between yellow and green that was named because of its resemblance to the green color of one of the French liqueurs called green chartreuse, introduced in 1764...

 (yellow-green) or off-white flowers it produces in summer. The flowers are followed by small black berries

Berry

The botanical definition of a berry is a fleshy fruit produced from a single ovary. Grapes are an example. The berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. They may have one or more carpels with a thin covering and fleshy interiors....

 that contain seeds that are brown and bumpy. P. lutea grows in bright shade to sunny places with moist, rich soil.

Yellow passionflower is often good for butterfly garden

Butterfly Garden

Butterfly Garden is a life simulation game by independent developer Autonomous Productions, revolving around the raising and collecting of butterflies. Initially for the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade, the developers have promised there will be a PC version and WiiWare version...

s, as it is a host for gulf fritillaries

Gulf Fritillary

The Gulf Fritillary or Passion Butterfly, Agraulis vanillae, is a striking, bright orange butterfly of the family Nymphalidae, subfamily Heliconiinae. These were formerly classified in a separate family, the Heliconiidae or longwing butterflies, and like other longwings this species does have long,...

, julia butterflies

Dryas julia

Dryas iulia , commonly called the Julia Butterfly, Julia Heliconian, or The Flame, is a species of brush-footed butterfly. The sole representative of its genus Dryas, it is native from Brazil to southern Texas and Florida, and in summer can sometimes be found as far north as eastern Nebraska...

 (Dryas julia), and zebra longwings (Heliconius charitonius). It is also the only pollen

Pollen

Pollen is a fine to coarse powder containing the microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce the male gametes . Pollen grains have a hard coat that protects the sperm cells during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants or from the male cone to the...

 source used by an unusual specialist bee

Bee

Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, and are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila...

, Anthemurgus passiflorae

Anthemurgus passiflorae

Anthemurgus passiflorae is a small , black, bee that occurs from central Texas to North Carolina and north to Illinois. Females of this solitary bee use collected nectar and pollen to feed larvae located in nests constructed in the ground...

, which is the sole member of its genus; this rare bee is unusual in that despite its obligate relationship with the plant (oligolecty

Oligolecty

The term oligolecty is used in pollination ecology to refer to bees that exhibit a narrow, specialized preference for pollen sources, typically to a single genus of flowering plants...

), it does not pollinate it.