Anemone coronaria a kedumim israel.avi
Anemone coronaria a kedumim israel
A journey through Israel's plant life
At Ramat Hanadiv, the 17-acre Rothschild Memorial Gardens south of Haifa, we could examine this plant more closely, in beds given over to each of Israel’s native irises.
Looking skywards over Be’er Sheva we spot a cloud of black kites riding the thermals on their northerly migration from Africa to Europe. Later in the week, at a point where Israel, Jordan and Syria are but a rusting wire fence apart, we saw white storks on a similar mission.
Israel is about the same size as Wales – and would fit eight times into the state of Florida. But from parched desert to the ski resorts of Mt Hermon in the north, it is as varied as any country on earth. So too is its flora. A predominantly limestone terrain supports more than 1,000 species. On the 40-mile-long Golan Heights alone there are a greater number of different plants than in the whole of Britain. To reach it we travel up the Jordan Valley, where dessert grapes ripen three months ahead of those in southern Europe. Here immigrant Thai workers, better suited to high temperatures, work fruit and vegetable fields and cultivate the acres of amaryllis (Hippeastrum) bulbs destined for Dutch, British and US flower markets.
