THE BOTANICAL GARDENS’ DISCOVERY TRAIL New in Jerusalem! Come discover, touch and feel nature in a unique adventure for the whole family Explore year round with a Botanical Gardens annual membership! The Hebrew versions of articles in English often carry different photographs, Contents which are worth checking out! 2 Discovery Trail 14 An Outing to the Savannah, 3 Contents or: A Visit which Ended Badly 4 Gardens News 16 Summer fun 6 Pontederia in the Vegetable Garden 8 The Story Behind Our Grains 18 Friends and Volunteers 10 Anthemis amblyolepis 19 Profile 11 Kalanit 20 Family Page New Online Journal for Israeli Flora Harvest Festivities 12 Succulents in our Village – Kfar Azar fun plants for the summer 22 Events Editors: Ruth Perlman and Sara Adar Scientific editing: Dr. Ori Fragman-Sapir Editorial Board: Sara Adar, Channa Cohen, Nehama Foerster, Ruth Perlman, Dr. Ori Fragman-Sapir Odelia Aroshas Photography: Ori Fragman-Sapir,Oz Golan, Judith Marcus Graphic Design: Ran Levi+ Translation: Ofer Grunwald, Professional Translation Services Printed by: Shimshon Printers Address: 1 Zalman Shneor Street, Nayot, Jerusalem (via Nayot Petrol Station) Mailing address: The Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, Hebrew University Givat Ram Campus, Jerusalem 9021401 Telephone: 02 6794012 | Fax: 02 6793941 www.en.botanic.co.il Summer Opening hours: Sundays through Thursdays 9.00-19.00 Fridays and holiday eves 9.00-17.00 Sabbaths and holidays 9.00-18.00 Hours may be extended for special events - please check our website. Cover photo: Pontederia cordata, by Ori Fragman-Sapir 3 News from the Hub... News from the Hub... Sustainable kindergarten Gardens Community and school gardens and Holocaust survivors As part of a new project for sustainable gardens in The Gardens Community, a Hub project for people of kindergartens, we’ve built 30 gardens around the city (10 55, meets once a week for horticultural training and in Orthodox kindergartens, 10 in Arab kindergartens, 10 for volunteering around the city. Among other things, in State and State-Religious kindergartens). We provided they volunteer with the Dolls and Dreams group, of the teachers with training, and built the gardens together 25 Holocaust survivors, who meet once a month for with the children’s families and volunteers, and provide horticultural and environmental activities. The project is support throughout the year on both horticulture and significant and emotional for all involved. To quote one curriculum. The project enabled the gardens, the of the participants: “The plants give us hope in our lives children and the broader community to grow. The project and return our love… They remind us that something is run together with the Jerusalem Municipal Education new is born.” Authority, the JBG Agricultural Farm, the David Yellin Kayma Farm’s hydroponic greenhouse College Center for Sustainability, and the Ministry for The Kayma Farm from Beit Zait have built their Environmental Protection. We also built sustainable hydroponic greenhouse in the JBG. The greenhouse gardens in various kindergartens and schools, and are provides work for Kayma’s young farmers, who have slowly transforming the city’s schools into green spaces dropped out of other educational programs, and grow to ensure that Jerusalem’s children will be able to enjoy vegetables in nothing but water. The greenhouse, the nature even within the confines of the city! first of its kind in an urban setting, covers 1,000 square The Hub’s training greenhouse meters and is a significant step forward in urban farming! The Hub’s training greenhouse is working non-stop, Community engagement hosting various Hub and third-party groups such as the in planning the Hub compound Green Parliament, comprising 30 top students from East We held an event to engage our community in planning Jerusalem. Work includes growing plants for the edible the designated Hub compound. We invited members urban forests group, for the Engineers Without Borders’ from Jerusalem’s sustainable community to partner with rooftop garden project in the Hebrew University’s Givat us right from the start in brainstorming the plans for Ram campus, and more. this compound. We hope they will continue working with the Hub in its construction and development, and will use its facilities when they are ready. The meeting included a public-comment process together with Austerlitz Architecture, who are designing the facility, and yielded a wealth of knowledge and insights. Saving the geophytes Works are underway to expand Jerusalem’s light rail system, and this work is expected to destroy an urban nature preserve near Kiryat Menachem. The site is Members of the Green Parliament in training at the the native habitat for rare and endemic geophytes. In Hub's greenhouse 4 Lior Gottesman News from the Hub... News from the Hub... Director, JBG Hub January, we called on our community to come to the David Mendelbaum, the Hub’s new nature preserve to save the area’s geophytes. Dozens of content developer members from Jerusalem’s eco-community answered We have grown and added a new team member, David our call, including young families, teens, and senior Mendelbaum, as our content developer. David will citizens, who saved hundreds of orchids, buttercups, work to develop content for two key areas – urban and cyclamens. These were re-planted in Jerusalem’s food growing, and ecological functions of open urban two Botanical Gardens – in Givat Ram and Mount spaces. David is an agronomist who graduated from the Scopus – and in other sites around the city. Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot, and also works with Returning Salvia bracteata and Salvia Community Ltd. and develops eco-community projects multicaulis to Nature with Green Team in East Jerusalem. Until lately, David coordinated the youths Beit Hakerem Sustainable Neighborhood project, Salvia bracteata, a rare species which used to grow wild and also worked at the JBG for several years with the in Jerusalem, went extinct in the wild 22 years ago during Courses and Education departments. construction of the Begin Highway – its last known Green volunteer patrol. habitat in Israel. Before it went extinct, the JBG collected In March, we held a round-table discussion with the the last few specimens of this salvia for propagation. We Jerusalem Municipality’s Volunteering Council and recently ran a project to return Salvia bracteata and the Jerusalem Community Gardens, on establishing a Green similarly rare Salvia multicaulis to Nature. The project Volunteer Patrol for Jerusalem. The meeting was attended was led by Green Team youths in the Gazelle Valley, by 20 representatives from various volunteer organizations, Ein Yael, and in community gardens across the city. The and we brainstormed ways to train volunteers at the Hub, inspiring story was covered extensively by national and which would serve as a central resource and coordinator local media, appearing in newspapers, on radio and for all the city’s green organizations looking for volunteers. national television. International Volunteering Conference As part of the International Volunteering Conference (the first of its kind in Israel), led by the International Volunteerism Association (IVA) in partnership with the JBG HUB (as the Israeli Partner) and three additional volunteering organizations from Germany, Italy, and France, our community coordinator, Ma’ayan Shiri, presented the various volunteering opportunities in the Hub and the JBG. The conference sought to promote collaboration between civil organizations in Israel and in Europe, and raise the number of people participating in volunteer programs. The conference was attended by representatives from the various embassies, Planting rare Salvia by 'Green Team' youths in the various municipal authorities in Israel, and numerous Gazelle Valley volunteering organizations. 5 Pontederia – the Water Pickerel Dr. Michael Avishai Visitors to the Gardens’ ponds are familiar by now with the special life style of water plants: they wake-up late, when most of the Gardens’ plants finished their spring or early summer flower show and continue late into autumn, when chilly lengthening nights signal to them the end of their growth season. The dense clumps of Pontederia leaves, topped by tall dense blue flowering spikes, are no exemption to this rule. As members of a small plant family (Pontederiaceae) of tropical affinity, this is only natural. Their name commemorates Guigi Pontederia, a 17th century Italian Botanist. Interestingly, in nature they occur in marshy fertile soils or riverbanks from Brazil all the way to southeastern Canada and in cultivation they are invasive pest, forbidden in many countries, such as Australia. In Israel it is cultivated and is not invasive. Watching them bloom, one asks himself what gives such beautiful flowering plants this notorious reputation. It is an interesting assemblage of features: they are perennials growing from a submerged thick rhizome, Pontederia cordata 6 able to survive periods of drought. The rhizome division and never set seed – their flower is singularly adapted to pollination by wild relatives yield masses of seed. Contrary a single species of bee, to which a reward of to other tropical plants distinguished by nectar is offered. The flower is distinguished short lived fruits, Pontederia fruits are long- by styles of three lengths in individual living, dispersed far afield by aquatic fowls. different plants. It had already caught the Once shed from their mother plant, they eye of Charles Darwin, who discovered its need the winter to ripe their nut-like seeds function as a perfect setup to avoid self- and germinate next spring. Together with pollination. Only a plant with a different type other features this is the key to understand of style length can fertilize each plant. While the wide distribution of this genus and its cultivated plants are usually propagated by ability to invade other biomes. Pontederia cordata 7 Shavuot Special The Story Behind Our Grains Dr. Ori Fragman-Sapir The Fertile Crescent, including Israel, our diet became more limited compared is a special region, where societies to the diverse diet of our hunter-gatherer developed and made use of Nature’s ancestors, who roamed larger areas.