Thursday, November 18, 2010

Flower words


"When our babe he goeth walking in his garden
Around his tinkling feet the sunbeams play;
    The posies they are good to him
    And bow them as they should to him,
As he fareth upon his kingly way:
The birdlings of the wood to him
    Make music, gentle music, all the day
    When our babe he goeth walking in his garden.
"
Eugene Field

The Passion Flower Story

Bosio’s passion flower shows the crown of thorns (corona filaments) twisted and plaited, the Passin Flower Drawing three nails (stigma) and the column of the flagellation just as they appear on ecclesiastical banners. He writes that the insides of the petals are tawny in Peru, but in New Spain they are white tinged with rose-pink, the crown of thorns having a blood red fringe, suggesting the ‘Scourge with which our blessed LORD was tormented’. He describes ‘the column [androgynophore] rising in the centre of the flower surrounded by the thorn of crowns, the three nails at the top of the column. In between, near the base of the column is a yellow colour about the size of a reale, in which there are five spots or stains [stamens] of the hue of blood evidently setting forth five wounds received by our LORD on the cross’.
Passin Flower Drawing
The colour of the column, crown [ovary] and the nails is clear green and the crown is surrounded by a kind of veil of very fine violet coloured hair. There are seventy two filaments (crona filaments) which, according to tradition, is the number of thorns in the crown of thorns set upon Christ’s head. ‘The abundant and beautiful leaves are shaped like the head of a lance or pike like the spear that pierced the side of our Saviour, while the underside of the leaf is marked with dark round spots signifying thirty pieces of silver’, that Judas was paid to betray Christ.