It was by complete random chance that I clicked on a post that had a link to this...
It looked very coincidentally like my mystery flower, so I sent a message to the very kind and helpful etsian Sapphires Child on the off chance she knew about this one too. Turns out, she did!
Since I am sure you were on the edge of your seat waiting to find out about this, this is your moment...
So, the mystery plant is a Blue Passion Flower, or Passiflora caerulea, which is a South American vine. Apparently it gets its name based on religious symbolism associated with the Passion of the Christ, which I'll leave to you to read on wikipedia if you feel like it. I was more intrigued by the fact that the weird fruits are actually edible, and the flowers can become tea. Although, I was sort of put off that idea by the fact that the article says that the leaves contain a substance that breaks down into cyanide, but that 'its possible to boil away most of the cyanide'. Really, this is a little disturbing on a couple levels... 1. should people really be getting instructions on eating random plants in their yard from wikipedia? and 2. "most of" the cyanide can be boiled off? MOST OF? hmmmm... when we're talking about a highly toxic substance (although- maybe its fine, the caveat here is the only thing I know about it is based on Sherlock Holmes novels where I remember that it smells of bitter almonds) somehow that just doesn't seem like a good idea...
But at any rate, I'm totally psyched that I ran into Sapphires Child and she helped me out... in honor of that, here's her etsy mini... check out her shop and spread the good will!
6 comments:
Glad to be of service! Thanks for the feature too. :)
I'm right there with you on the cyanide thing. But its surprising how many foods that are staples in the tropics are toxic or at least unfriendly if not prepared correctly. It always makes me wonder how people figured out the stuff was edible in the first place.
lol my favorite part is this: "with almost no work on my part." :D
you know interestingly, that is one of my favorite parts, too! ;-)
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Amazing plant!
What a funny little flower. I would have been totally intrigued by it if I found it around one day, too. Hooray for sapphirechild!
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