The compass rose has appeared on charts and maps since the 1300s, beginning with portolan charts. Its name comes from the resemblance of its compass points to flower petals, and it originally served as a wind rose indicating the directions of the winds. The thirty-two points of the compass rose derive from the eight major winds, eight half-winds, and sixteen quarter-winds. In the Middle Ages, Mediterranean countries commonly knew the wind names tramontana, greco, levante, siroco, ostro, libeccio, ponente, and maestro, whose initials appeared around the edges of portolan charts. Western apprentice seamen were expected to learn the names of all the points, a skill known as boxing the compass. No absolute standard for drafting a compass rose developed, and different schools of cartographers created their own forms. In the earliest charts, north was marked by a spearhead above the letter T for tramontana; around the time of Columbus this evolved on Portuguese maps into a fleur-de-lys. In the fourteenth century, the L for levante on the east side was replaced with a cross indicating the direction to Paradise or to where Christ was born in the Levant. The figure’s colors were used for graphic clarity at sea, with the eight principal points usually shown in black, the half-winds in blue or green, and the quarter-wind points in red.