Wonderful
as Van Gogh’s painting is, it’s not quite the same as seeing real-life irises.
For no cost at all, one can visit the iris reserve in South Netanya, close to
the coast, during February/March (as we did) and see the stunning iridescent
purple coastal iris (Iris atropurpurea) - a protected plant (critically endangered)
that can only be found on the coastal plain of Israel.
These irises have three
large outer petals, and three smaller inner petals, which fold over one another to form a kind of chamber. But
not all irises have this type of structure. A day or two after we saw coastal
irises, we found some rather beautiful irises of a different kind during an
afternoon visit to Mount Arbel. The barbary nut (Gynandriris sisyrinchium) is a dwarf
iris and has the Hebrew name - צהרון מצוי
= the common tzaharon. At the end of
their kindergarten day, our little grandchildren, each of whom is the apple of
my (iris) eye, go to an afternoon after school club, known in Hebrew as a tzaharon. The word tzaharon takes
its origin from the word tzaharayim - meaning ‘noon’. And the barbary
nut – the common tzaharon is so called
because its flowers are closed all morning and only open at noon.
Some days I think I too am a bit of a tzaharon.
--
As well as the iris photos, I’ve included two birds, that we’re seeing
a lot of at the moment. The rather handsome black-headed bird is a male
stonechat, and the brown bird with red tail feathers is a female black redstart.
---
In recent days we have been lucky enough to see
two sorts of lupin (US spelling is lupine and Hebrew word is turmus possibly
related to the word thermos [= warm, hot]).
These two types are the deep blue lupin (Lupinus pilosus) with a white splodge in the
middle of its blue petals,
and the pale blue and white Israeli lupin (Lupinus palaestinus).
Beautiful as the flowers are, I particularly
like to look at the lupin’s wonderful palmate leaves.
You might think me a little loopy, but I must
tell you that when I see lupins growing, I do wonder what is lurking beneath
them. The Midrash (Gen Rab 79:6) relates that the great second century sage,
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, planted lupin seeds in Tiberias (our hometown) to
determine whether the ground below was part of an ancient cemetery. Where there
were skeletons below, lupins grew from the seeds – but lupins didn’t grow where
there was an absence of bones. And, by the way, I’ve checked – there are no
skeletons in my closet.
Lupins are edible and have been eaten for
thousands of years – the Talmud (Beitzah 35) states that the leguminous beans are
as bitter as can be, but if boiled in water seven times they become sweet and
can be wolfed down along with the tastiest of desserts. Though I have to say,
rather than turmus for dessert, I think I shall stick with tiramisu.
--
Have you ever read H.G Wells’ novel ‘The
Invisible Man’? I wonder if he got the idea from the false Apollo butterfly
that I wrote about last week. It wasn’t clear from last week’s photo that this
amazing little butterfly can be almost as invisible as Wells’ eponymous
character. As the butterfly ages its wings become more and more transparent. The
elderly butterfly I saw a few days ago at Gamla was barely noticeable as it
rested on a yellow flower. It does make you wonder why other critters don’t use
this method of camouflage. Well, actually, a few do, including glass frogs, the
glass octopus and some jelly fish. Watch out next time you’re swimming in tropical
waters.
