A lone poppy, right, blooms among unopened buds and 

 seed capsules. Below: Buttercups in the Judean hills have 

 bright scarlet petals. Although most species of buttercups 

 and wild tulips are yellow, those growing in Mediterranean 

 climate zones are commonly red. 



Bernd Heinrich 





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Some of the terraces lay fallow now, or 

 seemed to. But the olive trees in their gray- 

 green foliage and the small almond trees, 

 bare of leaves but covered with sprays of 

 pink flowers, were obviously there as a re- 

 sult of human effort. So was the stonework 

 that held up the terraced strips themselves. 

 Plants here grow in wild proflision, with a 

 mean density of forty species per square 

 yard. Yet only certain types can survive 

 and prosper under the exacting conditions 

 imposed by the environment and humans. 

 Wild trees, obviously, could not. And that 

 exclusion opened a niche for others. 



I had just visited the Western Wall, the 

 remnant of the Third Temple built by King 

 Herod (or rather, his slaves), where the 

 cracks between the giant, symmetrical 

 blocks of limestone are stuffed with notes 

 written by the devout. Seeing what people 

 rest then- hopes on had left me strangely 

 depressed. But seeing these humble stone 

 walls, holding up earth terraces at least as 

 old as the walls and decorated with gor- 

 geous pink cyclamen sprouting in the 

 cracks, was uplifting. I felt the "cosmic op- 

 timism" of the naturalist — someone who, 

 according to the definition of writer and 

 entomologist Robert Michael Pyle, does 

 not have an anthropocentric view of life. 

 Pyle has pointed out that no matter what 

 we humans can dish out, species that 



"know adversity and eat it up will endure." 

 These flowers have survived the impossi- 

 ble, not so much in spite of us but perhaps 

 because of us. 



Deep blue grape hyacinths and bright 

 red tulips grew "wild" along the hps and 

 crannies of these ancient terrace walls. 

 These, and others, were perennials, but at 

 least half of the terrace plants were annu- 

 als — tiny herbs that thrived through time, 

 not just because of the modest space they 

 occupied but through their ability to lie 

 dormant through long periods of drought, 

 to be resurrected and to spring up again 

 when sprinkled by rain. 



In the valley of the Jordan, where pas- 

 toraUsts, rather than farmers, held sway, 

 not a wild tree is left standing, and there 

 probably have not been any since before 

 the time of Christ. Sheep and goats and the 

 inexorable human hand had seen to that. 

 Now — as they have done for centuries — 

 Bedouins tend flocks of sheep and goats 

 that mow broad swaths over the land, nip- 

 ping everything to the root. Indeed, the 

 Bedouin is said to be not so much the son 

 of the desert, as its father 



Nothing green or succulent has a 

 chance to survive for long, unless it can re- 

 treat again into the ground in bulbs or tu- 

 bers or unless it is poisonous or prickly. 

 Such defenses are a competitive advan- 



tage against plants that don't have them 

 (since grazers exercise choice in what they 

 eat). But none is absolute. Perhaps the 

 plants' most obvious and effective strategy 

 against the grazers and the elements is to 

 grow jnd flower quickly after the rare 

 rains do come and then to revert quickly to 

 dormant, drought-resistant seeds before 

 the herbivores eat them. In short, the 

 plants are often annuals. 



Annuals are necessarily of small size. If 

 conditions are right, then many individu- 

 als can exist side by side. But which ones? 

 Why not all of one species, rather than 

 many species? Avi tells me, "If it were not 

 for the grazing, then the grasses would 



54 Natural History 5/94 



