Mediterranean Spring

Turkish Poppies

In  April  I was fortunate enough to enjoye a week’s coach tour of Turkey’s Lycian coast and rugged mountains. The area is renowned for its ancient monuments so we spent  much of our time tramping round ancient ruins in various stages of restoration. Although fascinated by these classical and Christian sites I was even more enthralled by the botanical features of a Mediterranean spring. Of all the many  wild flowers in bloom that month the blood-red poppy was the most conspicuous.

It has always puzzled me why so many Israelis confuse their sturdy , flamboyant Judaean anemones with poppies. The poppies, I remember seeing  in Palestine  were more like the fragile vermillion poppies  we have in Britain. On the Lycian coast , however, we saw poppies which, unless viewed at close range, could easily be mistaken for the anemones  that turned the hillsides round Jerusalem crimson each spring.

Anemones in \israel photographed bt Etan J Tal

 Another plant, a small tree, covered in purple sweet pea shaped flowers, caught the eye of everyone on the coach. It is known as the Judas tree from the legend that this was the tree from which the traitor apostle Judas hanged himself.

Although the crimson anemones play a starring role in my emotional recollections childhood, strangely the Judas tree  in all its springtime glory does not feature in any childhood memory.  All I recall  is my father , in the height of arid summer, pointing at an insignificant tree growing on a rocky hillside, and telling me the associated legend.   This has reinforced my realization of how very selective my memories are.

Incidentally, on my return to England I saw a Judas tree in lower a few houses down the road from my daughter's house in Market Harborough. Now I know it will grow in England I am adding it to my wish list. If I get to plant it though it will  be in my garden not for the deeply sentimental reasons I grow my my fig and apricot trees and  my anemones and miniature cyclamen but purely as a souvenir of my holiday in Turkey.