Passion Flower, (Passiflora Incense), Augusta, Georgia, July 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
raw beauty rises
from pine needles and sandspurs
ground dry as a bone
purple passion blooms
not a flower but a vine
wilting Georgia heat
veined leaves swallow sun
digest light into flowers
one day of glory
Life Blood (Of The Passion Flower), Not A Flower But A Vine, Augusta, Georgia, July 2008, all photos © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Post Script: I feel fortunate to have gotten these shots last week. I had never seen a Passion Flower up close; I found out later that many species only bloom one day a year (much like the Prickly Pear cactus). If Mom had not turned her head out the car window that day, I would have lived another year without experiencing this beautful flower in the flesh.
I am grateful that Mom knows her flowers. (Thank you, Mom. Oh, and Happy Birthday, Sis and Uncle B.!) Here are some other secrets of the Passiflora from different sites (the Wikipedia entry is excellent with photographs of many of the different species):
- ABOUT THE PASSIFLORA: 9 species of Passion Flower (out of about 500) are native to the United States, found from Ohio to the north, west to California and south to the Florida Keys. Most are vines, some are shrubs, a few species are herbaceous. The fruit of the passiflora plant is called passionfruit. The bracts are covered by hairs which exude a sticky fluid that sticks to insects. Studies have suggested this might be an adaptation similar to carnivorous plants.
- ONE DAY: In Victorian times the flower (which in all but a few species lasts only one day) was very popular and many hybrids were created.
- HERBAL REMEDIES: The leaves and roots have a long history of use among Native Americans in North America. Passiflora edulis and a few other species are used in Central and South America. The fresh or dried leaves are used to make an infusion, a tea that is used to treat insomnia, hysteria, and epilepsy, and is also valued for its painkilling properties. Some contain beta-carboline harmala alkaloids which are MAOIs with anti-depressant properties.
- POLLINATION: Decorative passifloras have a unique flower structure, which requires a large bee to effectively pollinate. In the American tropics, wooden beams are mounted very near passionfruit plantings to encourage Carpenter bees to nest. Some species can be pollinated by hummingbirds, bumble bees, wasps; others are self-pollinating.
- WHAT’S IN A NAME? Passion Flower does not refer to love, but to the Christian theological icon of the passion of Christ on the cross. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries discovered this flower and adopted its unique physical structures as symbols of Crucifixion. The radial filaments which can number more than a hundred and vary from flower to flower represent the Crown of Thorns. The 10 petals and sepals represent the 10 faithful apostles. The top 3 stigmata represent the 3 nails and the lower 5 anthers represent the 5 wounds.
- KNOWN ACROSS THE WORLD: In Spain, Passiflora is known as Espina de Cristo (Christ’s Thorn). In Germany it was once known as Muttergottes-Schuzchen (Mother-of-God’s Star). In Israel they are referred to as clock-flower (שעונית). In Japan, they are known as clock plant (時計草 tokeisō). In North America they are also called the Maypop, the water lemon, and the wild apricot (after its fruit). Native Americans in the Tennessee area called it ocoee, and the Ocoee River and valley are named after it.
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, August 10th, 2008
-related to posts: WRITING TOPIC – NAMES OF FLOWERS, PRACTICE – Summer – 20min, haiku (one-a-day)
Beautiful – the photos and the haiku 🙂
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You found it QM…my favorite flower! Great shot! I mentioned it to yb in an earlier story and she told me they had a whole society of people that follow them. There are many kinds of Passion Flowers but none as impressive as this particular variety. Aren’t these things amazing? Mother Nature, we should all bow to her artistic creations.
😉 H
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QM, What a beautiful shot. While I have read about the passion flower in many of my herbal remedy books, I have never seen one in the wild. The haiku are wonderful & I found the post script so interesting that I had to go searching for links & other info. One such link is
http://www.mgardens.org/JS-TPF-MG.html
I also found info referring to the passion flower leaves to be brewed as an hallucinogen, in addition to different ways to grow & cultivate for such purpose. I thought it interesting, although I am not interested in finding it out for myself!
Thank you for sharing a flower I knew very little about.
Good eye, Mom! D
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goddess, thank you so much.
heather, I just made the connection that this was the same flower you were talking about in the comments in the Writing Topic — Names of Flowers (link at bottom of post). I had to go back to that Topic post and read them — (Comments #11, #12, #18, #20 (LINK). And as it so happens I even linked to the same society at the end of the post.
I tell you, it was such a thrill that day to see this flower in the flesh. I would have totally missed it (even though we passed it going out of the driveway every day) if Mom had not pointed it out and it had not been in bloom that day. Really amazing flower. And your favorite!
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diddy, what a great link (Comment #3). I like this part which contains some cool history (about the Passion Flower and religious symbols in general):
It’s interesting about the religious symbolism. Maybe partly because I’m steeped in the Flannery O’Connor letters, The Habit Of Being, which are full of references like this. And the other thing is that Mom mentioned some similar symbolism last week with the dogwood (which I was familiar with and grew up with). I don’t know why I’d never heard it associated with the Passion Flower though.
Symbols are very powerful. And when they grow, bloom, seed, wilt, and die like plants, trees, flowers, all the more potent. Thanks for the link!
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I need some of that herbal infusion! Sounds like a miracle tea….
Gorgeous photos, meditative haiku.
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What a bizarrely gorgeous flower. I have never seen anything so intricate. It reminds me of a sea anemone (LINK).
Also, this morning when I first saw the photo but didn’t have time to comment, I had wondered if you connected to Heather’s comment about the passion flower being her favorite flower. I’m glad Heather made it back here. The flower is much more amazing than anything I saw on the internet when I was looking up Passiflora.
Also, I found the Spanish Christian connection to the Passion of the Christ to be so amazing. I mean, all those number and symbol connections. It made me wonder who (individual person) and how (was he sitting there staring at the flower and then it hit him?, or had he been trying to find something with those numbers and shapes?) those connections were made.
I’m grateful, too, to Amelia for alerting you to the flower.
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These are beautiful flowers. I see them fairly often when I’m out hiking or doing field work, and I’m amazed by them every time.
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Beautiful, QM. All of it. The flower, the photos, and the haiku.
I’ve never seen a passion flower before. How lucky you are!
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Gorgeous flower, QM. I don’t think passionflowers grow in the US Northern Tier, and I don’t remember ever seeing one in the wild. It would be a gorgeous flower for some macro shots.
And so much symbolism. It does have much detail – a flower you could really sit and study. How fun to see it – thanks to your mom’s quick eye, you have a lovely photograph.
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QM, maybe I’m odd, but I think this flower looks like it was put together by a committee! I want to LOL when I look at it. Talk about a design that’s “over the top,” it looks like it could start whirling and fly like a helicopter. Or a ballerina, whose tutu fell down…it puts my imagination in overdrive! Who needs a
hallucinogen, when you have this flowere to gaze upon…she’s beautiful, but funny, I would call her the Goldie Hawn of the flower kingdom.
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I love the idea of flowers digesting sunshine… and the photos are indeed great.
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Christine, the tea sounds great. I could use an herbal infusion this week, too. Really low energy.
diddy, I’m reminded again of your Foxfire books and all the old remedies in them. I was glad you brought them to the waiting room. Made for some good reading in-between time (when I could focus on reading. Somehow it was really hard to read in the hospital. But sometimes it was a good break).
ybonesy, it does look amazingly like your link to the sea anemone. The petals are so unique on the Passion Flower. It does make you wonder, too, who was sitting around staring at the flower, then making all those numerical and symbolic connections. Something that only blooms once a year just begs for some kind of magical connection though. There was a plant in Montana that used to do that and we’d feel lucky to see it in bloom when we were hiking. I think it was Beargrass but I can’t remember for sure.
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Robin, Bo, lirone, thank you. I feel very lucky to have captured these photos. teaspoon, how lucky you are to see them often when you are hiking.
Someone recently made reference to the trees or flowers breathing in as we are breathing out. I think it was a comment from breathepeace. I’m always so aware of that exchange happening between us and nature.
oliverowl, your comment makes me laugh. It does look like it’s put together by a committee. Yes, the Goldie Hawn of the flower kingdom! 8) It’s almost her weirdness that makes her beautiful.
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woah
it looks like its from another planet
does remind me of some of the more exotic orchid flowers
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amuirin, yes, other-worldly, isn’t she? Everytime I look at this shot of the passion flower, I can’t believe how beautiful and strange she looks. And there she was just growing in the humid heat and sand, blooming for a single day. Amazing.
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[…] Maybe you have trouble with groundhogs or slugs, or need advice about inside seed starting, passion flowers, or orchids. You can read more tips from award-winning horticulturist, hybridist, photographer and […]
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[…] -related to posts: The Ant & The Peony, WRITING TOPIC — NAMES OF FLOWERS, Secrets of the Passion Flower […]
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After learning about the passion flower (passiflora) after I took this photograph at the end of my uncle’s driveway in Georgia, it always reminds me of Easter and of Mary. Happy Easter.
_______________________
From the links in the piece above:
The Flowers of Our Lady include many flowers uniquely native to the Americas which were adopted and named as symbols of their faith by early Christian explorers, missionaries, converts and settlers. Notable among these are three which have become known and cultivated throughout the world: the Marigold (recalling the European Marigold), Passion Flower and Fuchsia (Our Lady’s Eardrops).
The “Passion” in “passion flower” refers to the passion of Jesus in Christian theology. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries adopted the unique physical structures of this plant, particularly the numbers of its various flower parts, as symbols of the last days of Jesus and especially his crucifixion: Blue Passion Flower (P. caerulea) showing most elements of the Christian symbolism
-The pointed tips of the leaves were taken to represent the Holy Lance.
-The tendrils represent the whips used in the flagellation of Christ.
-The ten petals and sepals represent the ten faithful apostles (excluding St. Peter the denier and Judas Iscariot the betrayer).
-The flower’s radial filaments, which can number more than a hundred and vary from flower to flower, represent the crown of thorns.
-The chalice-shaped ovary with its receptacle represents a hammer or the Holy Grail.
-The 3 stigmas represent the 3 nails and the 5 anthers below them the 5 wounds (four by the nails and one by the lance).
-The blue and white colors of many species’ flowers represent Heaven and Purity.
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