Complexity. Passsiflora caerulea, Passionflower, and Honeybee, Apis mellifera, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Hermannus Boerhaave (1668-1738), great naturalist and director of the Hortus of Leiden, called this plant (1727) by a now disused name: Granadilla. His personal motto was 'Simplex sigillum veri', something like 'Simplicity is the hallmark of truth'. What he would have thought of the complicated symbolism of Jesuits in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with respect to this Passionflower, I don't know. It's called 'Passionflower' because in its flowering could be seen by the faithful the instruments of Jesus' Passion: the nails, the pillar, the whips and of course the triune pistil.
Here that originally South American complexity is being visited by a Honeybee.
Complexity. Passsiflora caerulea, Passionflower, and Honeybee, Apis mellifera, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Hermannus Boerhaave (1668-1738), great naturalist and director of the Hortus of Leiden, called this plant (1727) by a now disused name: Granadilla. His personal motto was 'Simplex sigillum veri', something like 'Simplicity is the hallmark of truth'. What he would have thought of the complicated symbolism of Jesuits in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with respect to this Passionflower, I don't know. It's called 'Passionflower' because in its flowering could be seen by the faithful the instruments of Jesus' Passion: the nails, the pillar, the whips and of course the triune pistil.
Here that originally South American complexity is being visited by a Honeybee.