Each year final year Kew Diploma students are given an opportunity to apply for the Worms Travel Bursary. The successful candidate visits the JBG for four weeks and of course has the chance to discover plants in the wild growing elsewhere in Israel. This year’s WTB scholar is Olivia.
I have loved exploring some of the arid desert regions towards the south of the country since I arrived in Israel almost three weeks ago. However, being English, by last weekend, I was in need of a green ‘fix’, so I headed up North towards the wooded terrain of Mount Carmel.
I started my walk at Kibbutz Yagur, where on this very hot May morning, girls dressed in jodhpurs, led ponies to a show-jumping arena, whilst a man on a megaphone called out their scores. I could hear the hum of traffic from the motorway I had just left behind, and with the mountains hidden behind buildings, I began to wonder if I was in the right place.
A short walk later, I entered a gate to the Yagur Reserve and I was completely transported.
A beautiful Mediterranean hillside, punctuated with low-growing trees and large boulders rose in the heat before me. In the slightly cooler shade of the trees, hundreds of butterflies played about, whilst the sound of crickets rang out from the grasses below.
I had specifically come to see the Mediterranean woodland and marquis vegetation, dominated by Quercus calliprinos (Palestine oak) and other relatively low-growing evergreen trees and shrubs such as Pistacia lentiscus. The paucity of natural springs here has limited human settlement, which has allowed the natural woodland to remain relatively well preserved.
Forested hillside of the Yagur Reserve, near Mt Carmel. Dwarf trees dominated by Quercus calliprinos
The JBG and me 