downloads/Killip 2.pdf - Passion Flowers

474 FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY BOTANY, VOL. XIX
bracts are not repeatedly cleft as in the case of most varieties of
P. foetida or most other species of Dysosmia. The seeds are fully
three times as large as in other representatives of the subgenus,
being about the same size as those of P. quadrangularis.
301. Passiflora foetida L. Sp. PL 959. 1753.
Herbaceous vine, ill-odored, glabrous throughout, or with a
variable indument; stipules semi-annular about the stem, deeply
cleft into filiform, occasionally pinnatisect, gland-tipped divisions;
petioles up to 6 cm. long, glandless; leaves usually cordate at base,
membranous, 3-5-lobed, the degree of lobation and the shape of the
lobes highly variable; peduncles solitary, up to 6 cm. long; bracts
involucrate, 2-4-pinnatifid or -pinnatisect, rarely once pinnatifid,
the segments filiform, gland-tipped; flowers 2 to 5 cm. wide, white,
pink, lilac, or purplish; sepals ovate-oblong or ovate-lanceolate,
awned dorsally just below apex; petals oblong, oblong-lanceolate, or
oblong-spatulate, slightly shorter than the sepals; corona filaments
in several series, those of the 2 outer series filiform, about 1 cm. long,
the others capillary, 1 to 2 mm. long; operculum membranous, erect,
denticulate; fruit globose or subglobose, yellow to red; seeds ovatecuneiform,
about 5 mm. long and 2.5 mm. wide, obscurely tridentate
at apex, coarsely reticulate at the center of each face.
DISTRIBUTION: Throughout the American tropics, and frequently
introduced into other tropical regions.
Attached to a specimen of Passiflora foetida in the herbarium of
the Royal Botanic Gardens, Trinidad, is a letter to John Hart,
Superintendent of the Gardens, from Masters, from which I venture
to quote the following: "As to your passionflower, it is certainly a
form of P. foetida, a tropical weed which seems to be never twice
alike!
I dare say it would be possible to make 20 species out of it
one week but next you could not define them and would have to
make 20 more ! !"
This letter was written in 1894, twenty-two years
after the
publication of Masters' monograph of the family. What he says
about this complicated P. foetida group is as true today as it was in
1894, the much greater amount of herbarium material now available
only serving, perhaps, to increase the difficulties.
As in the case of similar complex species, several courses are open
to the monographer: (1)
the variants may be treated as races of a
single, highly polymorphic species, without any attempt being made
to assign formal subdivisional names to them; (2) numerous, poorly