Hedgehog Tree

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’s Christian community believed that a large hedgehog tree on Kadifekale (Smyrna Acropolis) had grown out of the staff of St. Polycarpus (Smyrna’s first Christian martyr). Christian pilgrims even collected its leaves as souvenirs. In the 17th Century, the Turkish globetrotter Evliya Çelebi 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.