flora of seychelles and aldabra 363 



Myesinace^. 



Eapanea seychellarum Mez in Engler Pflanzenr. iv, 376. 

 Myrsiyie capitellata Baker, Flora, 190, non Wall. 



Make: Morne Blanc at 600 metres, Thomasset, 78; summit 

 of Mount Harrison, Gardiner. Silhouette : Summit of Mon 

 Plaisir, 690 metres, Gardiner. 



PASSIFLORAS IN THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 

 By Vauqhan MacGaughey, 



Professor of Botany, College of Hawaii, Honolulu. 



The Passifloras" constitute a large tropical genus of about 

 three hundred species, mostly natives of tropical and subtropical 

 America. A few species are Malayan and Chinese. None of the 

 species, family, or order are indigenous to the Hawaiian Archipelago, 

 and none were known to the primitive Hawaiians. The few Indo- 

 Malayan species do not extend east into the Polynesian flora. 

 There are a few peculiar species in Fiji, Norfolk Island, and New 

 Caledonia. Since the discovery of Hawaii various members of the 

 genus Passiflora have been introduced into the islands, and culti- 

 vated for their ornamental flowers and foliage, or for their fruit. 

 A number of these introduced species are now wddely distributed 

 throughout the islands, and several (P. foetida, P. echdis, and 

 P. triloba) have escaped freely from cultivation, and are now well 

 established and naturalized. In this way the Passion-Flowers 

 have come to be a common feature in the lowland vegetation of 

 the various islands, both in and out of cultivation. The fruits 

 of several species — P. laurifolia, P. quadraiigularis, and P. edulis 

 — are offered for sale in the Honolulu markets, under the name of 

 Water Lemons. 



The Passifloras are herbs, shrubs, or trees ; mostly vines 

 climbing by means of simple tendrils. All the Hawaiian species 

 are vines. About a dozen species are native to the mainland 

 United States ; P. lutca and P. ijicarnata are common herbaceous 

 perennials throughout the South. The leaves are alternate, simple, 

 usually digitately lobed or angled, sometimes entire. 



The most remarkable structures of these vines are the large, 

 showy hermaphrodite flowers, the curiously shaped parts of which 

 were likened by the early Spanish and Italian Roman Catholic 

 travellers to the implements and accessories of the Crucifixion. 

 The flowers are usually solitary in the axils ; sometimes in axillary 

 racemes. Each blossom is usually subtended by two or three 

 calyx-like bracts ; these are sometimes delicately pinnatifid and 

 lace-like. The persistent calyx has five petal-like lobes. The 

 corolla comprises five petals, inserted on the throat of the calyx; 

 it is sometimes wanting. These ten parts were imagined, by the 

 devout, to represent the ten apostles present at the Crucifixion, 

 Peter and Judas being absent. 



* Astcphananthes Bory, Monactinneirma Bory, Municuia Pers., Discinma 

 Labill., Tacsonia Juss. 



