Asphodeline aestivus in full flower

Gareth Gilpin, our current travel scholar, continues his exploration of Israel, its botanical richness … and its food!

Sara (one of the 2013-4 scholars) and I were very lucky to be spending the day with the vivacious and lovely Ofri, who picked us up early (early for me) so we could get the most out of the day. The plan was to head over to the nature reserve at Ein Gedi, but we had quite a few mini adventures and distractions along the way! Early on we pulled up at a petrol station, and we started to walk behind it and climbed a stony hillside. You would never expect to see such a beautiful sight behind such a grubby, in-the-middle-of-nowhere place – but there it was, the whole hillside was festooned with Asphodeline aestivus in full flower. Apparently these are quite common in Israel, but I had never seen this species of Asphodeline before, and to see it in such wanton abundance was stunning. Mental notes were made to source this beauty for my company back home, and then introduce it to the landscape/design trade, for this plant was a marvel, and would surely go down a storm in England. We pored over many other curiosities and miniature beauties just coming into bloom, some of them absolutely tiny works of art.

We detoured a second time when Ofri spotted somebody selling food from a roadside kiosk, that he insisted we try. The seller was pleased to see us, and after lots of chatting back and forth he starting pulling all sorts of things out of his boxes. We had a long, brown, rectangular lump of something that looked like bean curd (served with a very spicy relish and tomato salsa). I can’t remember exactly what it was, and can’t even begin to guess at its name, but it was delicious, truly gobble-it-all-up delicious. That was slightly awkward as Sara and I were sharing a portion, and you could tell that neither of us wanted to pass up any opportunity to reach back in for another piece of the tasty brown slab. Then we were offered some wobbly white stuff, that used to be made from some kind of orchid, but was now synthetic – it was like the seller was going out of his way to make his food seem/sound/look as unappealing as possible, and then like a magician he abracadabra’d it all into deliciousness. This was served with copious amounts of sugary rosewater and coconut which finished the little road snack off nicely.

Yet another detour ensued, this time roadside, just opposite the Dead Sea. All I wanted to do was run to the other side and get my float on, but these two had other plans. My time would come. We scrutinised the area, wandering back and forth, marvelling at tiny pockets of richness, and calling each other over. Every time we saw something new, Ofri’s book would come out and the search would begin. People driving past must have thought we were lunatics. But we knew what we were doing, and we were happy doing it. We met a fellow madman/botanist on the same patch of dirt, who was thrilled as he had found some tiny specimen that was ultra-rare and that he hadn’t seen before. He couldn’t wait to post a picture quiz on his botanical forum for people to try and guess the identity of the plant, but he said Dr. Ori Fragman-Sapir (as I’m sure you all know, Scientific Director at JBG) would be banned from entering. Wise words.

This adventure will continue in another blog soon …