時計草 Passion Flower

草花の好きな私は常にその写真を撮りためています。といってそれらの草花の名前など調べることもないのですが。先日あるきっかけで他の花について調べていた時に、たまたま私が数ヶ月前に撮った花の情報が載っていました。しかもその由来がとても興味深いものだったのでご紹介したいと思います。

I like plants and flowers and always take pictures of them. But I never really bother to check their names and info. Few days ago, someone gave me some description of a flower and that interest me to investigate further information. While I was doing that, one of the pictures on that site was the picture of the flower I pictured few months ago and the information caught my attention. It's very interesting and I would like to share it with you all.

この花。和名は3つに分裂した雌しべが時計の長針、短針、秒針のように見える特徴のある花を咲かせることから時計草。
外国では、花がキリストの十字架を象徴していることから、パッションフラワーと呼ばれている。この植物はキリストの受難を象徴する形をしており、花の子房柱は十字架、3つに分裂した雌しべが釘、巻きひげはムチ、副冠はいばらの冠、5枚の花弁とガクは合わせて10人の使徒、葉は槍などと言われた。

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 Christ and especially the Crucifixion:
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 (less 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 stigmata 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.

Outside the Christian heartland, the regularly-shaped flowers have reminded people of the face of a clock; in Israel they are known as "clock-flower" (שעונית), and in Japan they are called tokeisō (時計草, "clock plant").