Greeting Card - Passionfruit Passiflora Edulis

This greeting card is is taken from an original watercolour work by Jennifer Duval-Smith, a self-taught botanical artist living and working in Auckland.

This A6 (105x148mm/10"x15") card is printed on nice thick 300gsm card and comes with an excellent quality white envelope, securely wrapped in a cellophane envelope

Passionfruit - Passiflora Edulis features the ripening fruit and the leaves and twining tendrils of the passionfruit vine, a New Zealand Garden favourite which flourishes in the warmer climate of the North Island. A tart treat, many Kiwis have fond childhood memories of cutting open the leathery purple skin of the ripened fruit to scoop out the delicious seeds with a teaspoon. The striking yellow and black seeds also frequently feature on top of pavlova, a national dessert favourite made of meringue and cream.

The Passionfruit is a vine species of passion flower that is native to southern Brazil through Paraguay and northern Argentina. It has a remarkable number of symbolic interpretations across different cultures. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries used different parts of its spectacular round flower to illustrate the story of the Passion of Christ, the radial filaments representing the crown of thorns. In the Flower Language so beloved by well off Victorians, the flower symbolised religious superstition. In India the five anthers are interpreted as the Five Pandavas placing the divine Krishna at the centre. In Israel, Greece and Japan, it is called a version of Clock Flower. In Turkey its name refers to the wheel of fortune.