Trees for the season

Every festival, every occasion, every special moment in both local and global arena is associated with some plant or another. Plants like olives, figs, date palms, passion flowers and Easter lilies are much talked about during this time because of their ability to symbolise a variety of life-lessons like faith, hope, love, trust, forgiveness, humility, patience, endurance, etc. Though olive trees slowly get acclimatised to Chennai’s climate, it hardly flowers and fruits as observed in few home gardens in the city. Passion flower and Easter lilies Passion flowers and Easter lilies are the most significant flowers of this season and are found blooming profusely around February, March and April. The purple flowers are very popular with the Christians especially during the season of lent because the intricate details in the purple flowers signal the vital events that took place during the crucifixion of Jesus – colour symbolises the purple robe that Jesus was given as a symbol of mockery, ten sepals and petals refer to the ten loyal disciples of Christ excluding Peter who denied and Judas who betrayed, the slender filaments in the corona look like the crown of thorns, five stamens point to the five wounds of Christ, the apical trifid style resembles the three nails that pierced the hands and legs, red spots signify the blood drops, the fibrous tendrils look like the whip that was used to scourge and the lobed leaves resemble the soldier’s spear that pierced.