[Sajen]

Originally Posted by Ian

I think we may be looking at depictions of more than one type of flower. As shown on the leather throat of your Visayan sword, one of these representations has a central round area and what appear to be the leaves that surrounded the pod from which the petals emerged, as shown in the picture of a catmon flower that you present. However, the carving adjacent to it looks different--there is no central round area and the pod leaves are missing. Looks like two different plants to me. In other depictions, some show a circular center and other do not. It is also curious that carvers would get the number of petals wrong consistently.

The five-petal example you show really does look like a catmon flower, so why the mistakes on other examples? Strange.

Exactly what I want to know and thought byself and the reason why I asked about this. Again, thank you very much!

Detlef