Passion Flower

The passion flower is a piece of living architecture: a fringe of blue and white filaments, five stamens, and three curved styles arranged with such deliberate symmetry that early Spanish missionaries read the whole Passion story in it and gave it its name.

In Hawaiʻi the fruit is better known than the flower. Lilikoʻi takes its name from a district on East Maui where the vine was first planted in the 1880s, and it went on to flavor everything from butter and chiffon pie to shave ice syrup.

The vine climbs by tendrils, blooms for a single day, and then quietly starts a fruit. Beauty first, then something to share.