No. 9] ( Passion- Flower Passifloracece). 77 



Fruit, dark purple, oval, one half inch in diameter; 

 numerous-seeded. A pulpy berry. 



Found, in damp thickets from Southern Pennsylvania to 

 Florida, and westward. 



A smooth, slender vine, herbaceous, from five to ten 

 feet long, climbing by axillary tendrils. 



The Blue Passion-Flower (P. cczrulea, L.), often culti- 

 vated for its foliage and its showy blossoms, is a native of 

 Brazil. 



There it often grows to a distance of thirty feet, with a 

 woody stem four or five inches in diameter. 



A southern species, P. incarnata, L., having blossoms 

 two inches or more across with white or purplish petals 

 and crown, and with markings of green and of deeper 

 purple, is well worthy of cultivation. Its fruit (commonly 

 named May-pop) is as large as an egg, and edible. This 

 species is found as far north as Kentucky and Virginia, 

 and in some places is so abundant as to be looked upon as 

 a troublesome weed. 



There are some one hundred and twenty species of the 

 Passion-Flower, nearly all of them found only in the 

 Western Continent, and most of them only in the Tropics. 

 Five of them are found in the Atlantic States, but only 

 one of the five (our P. lutea, L.) as far north as Pennsyl- 

 vania and Illinois. 



The name Passion-Flower was given, probably by the 

 early Spanish missionaries to this country, because the 

 parts of the flower and of the plant serve so strangely well 

 as reminders of the crucifixion of our Lord. In the pal- 

 mate leaves (less marked in our species than in others) 



