148 Passion-flower family 



PASSION-FLOWER FAMILY (Passifloraceae) 



Vines, climbing by tendrils. Leaves alternate. Flowers with 

 fringed inner crown. Fruit pulpy inside, with firm rind. 



Passion-Flo WER. Passion- Vine. Matpop (Genus 



Passiflora) 



Imagination vied with sober fact and came off victor 

 when Spanish explorers found and named the passion- 

 flowers of the New World and attempted to describe them. 

 Fantastically seeing in these plants symbols of the suffer- 

 ings of Christ, they pictured in their drawings the crown 

 of thorns and the nails as actual parts of the flower, and 

 in letters sent to Spain declared that the plant had been 

 "designed by the great Creator that it might, in due 

 time, assist in the conversion of the heathen among whom 

 it grows." 



A South American species first caught their attention, 

 but the symbolism was equally applicable to the plant 

 found in Florida. The lobed leaves were, to them, the 

 hands of Christ's persecutors ; the tendrils were the whips 

 with which He was scourged; the sepals and petals repre- 

 sented ten disciples — Judas and Peter being absent. In 

 the pistil they saw the three nails; the five stamens re- 

 called the five wounds ; the young seedpod was the sponge 

 dipped in vinegar, and the short stalk below it represented 

 the pillar against which Christ was scourged. Opinion 

 was divided in regard to the beautiful fringed corona ; some 

 saw in it the "parted vesture,'' others believed it to repre- 

 sent the aureole about the head of the risen Lord, while 

 still others contended that it symbolized the crown of 

 thorns, and clinched their argument by asserting that 

 the number of filaments in the corona was miraculously the 

 same as the number of thorns (72) that tradition ascribes 

 to that crown. 



