Since antiquity, people have believed that the leaves of the hedgehog tree represent the cycle of life and death whenever they change colour from green to blood-red. That, in turn, has caused many to view it as sacred. Records indicate that the Greeks used them during cult ceremonies for Zeus and Apollo. During the Ottoman Empire, Smyrna\u2019s Christian community believed that a large hedgehog tree on Kadifekale (Smyrna Acropolis) had grown out of the staff of St. Polycarpus (Smyrna\u2019s first Christian martyr). Christian pilgrims even collected its leaves as souvenirs. In the 17th Century, the Turkish globetrotter Evliya \u00c7elebi noted that he had never seen a tree quite like it in all his travels, and went so far as to say that it held the cure for 72 diseases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since antiquity, people have believed that the leaves of the hedgehog tree represent the cycle of life and death whenever they change colour from green…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"museum-category":[192],"museum-country":[],"museum-curator":[],"museum-director":[],"museum-tag":[],"class_list":["post-8535","museum","type-museum","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","museum-category-agora-en"],"yoast_head":"\n