Passionflower

The passionflower, Passiflora, is a climbing vine of the American tropics bearing an intricate and unmistakable flower, and its name records one of the most elaborate readings ever given to a plant. Spanish missionaries in South America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw in the flower a complete emblem of the Passion of Christ and used it to teach the crucifixion: the fringed corona became the crown of thorns, the three stigmas the three nails, the five anthers the five wounds, the ten petals and sepals the ten faithful apostles (Peter and Judas set aside), and the coiling tendrils the cords and whips.

The elaborate symbolic reading was first written down in 1609 by the Italian writer Jacomo Bosio, in Rome, who had been shown a passionflower and told of its meaning by a Mexican friar recently returned from the missions, and Bosio's account, expanded with further correspondences by writers who came after him, became the standard version repeated in devotional literature and garden books for the next four centuries. The passionflower's vine, which climbs by clinging tendrils and can cover a considerable area in a single season, gave missionaries an additional practical advantage: a fast-growing, visually arresting plant that could be pointed to directly, growing wild, made a far more vivid teaching aid than any painted image brought from Europe.

The passionflower thus entered European Christianity as a living sermon, its Latin and common names in many languages built on the Passion, and it was received as a providential sign that the mysteries of the faith were written into the plants of the newly encountered world. Alongside this devotional meaning the plant had a folk reputation as a calming and sleep-giving herb, a use of the American species that is recorded here as folk history and not as medical advice. A wild vine of the tropics read, petal by petal, as the instruments of the crucifixion, the passionflower is perhaps the most fully allegorised of all flowers, its whole symbolism a Christian meditation mapped onto a single extraordinary bloom.

Modern clinical research has given some real support to passionflower's old folk reputation as a calming herb: several controlled trials have studied Passiflora incarnata extracts for anxiety, with a few finding effects comparable to standard anti-anxiety medication over short trial periods, though the overall body of evidence remains small and the studies vary considerably in quality, so current medical opinion treats the plant as a plausible mild remedy under active study rather than a proven treatment. It remains a licensed ingredient in some over-the-counter herbal sleep and calming preparations in parts of Europe, a regulated modern use quite distinct from its devotional reading as a living sermon on the crucifixion.