44 AGRICULTURAL AND BOTANICAL EXPLORATIONS IN PALESTINE. 



find. I could therefore only gather specimens, noting their habitat, 

 associations, etc. 



As soon as I got home I wrote the good news to my friends in Ber- 

 lin. A short notice of the results of this trip and an article by Pro- 

 fessor Schweinfurth on the importance of this discovery and on the 

 possibilities which it opened up were published. 3 



My trip of 1906 merely established the native habitat of Triticum 

 dicoccum dicoccoides. It was still necessary to find out the extent of 

 the distribution, its habit of growth, etc., and I made another trip 

 for this purpose in 1907. The principal results of this trip relating 

 to problems of the cereals in their wild state have been published, 

 with an introduction by Professor Schweinfurth & and an appendix 

 by Professor Ascherson, in the proceedings of the Botanical Society 

 of Berlin. 



On this trip I was able to show conclusive^ that Triticum dicoccum 

 dicoccoides is indigenous to the regions of Mount Hermon and the 

 northern part of the Trans-Jordan. The idea that it is a plant 

 escaped from cultivation can not be entertained for a moment. In 

 the first place, Triticum dicoccum is not cultivated anywhere in Syria 

 and Palestine. I have not been able to discover any hybrid or 

 mongrel between this wild wheat and the cultivated forms. 

 Second — and this is the important point — our Triticum dicoccum 

 dicoccoides rarely appears on soils which have been cultivated for 

 any purpose. It grows only upon the slopes of the most arid and 

 rocky hills and in places exposed to the hottest rays of the oriental 

 sun. 



DIVERSITIES OF WILD EMMEP. 



The number of forms of Triticum dicoccum dicoccoides which I 

 gathered in 1907 is astounding — " verbliiffend," to use Kornicke's own 

 expression. I found specimens in which the glume had a secondary 

 tooth (compare PL VIII, figs. 2 and 3), produced by the great devel- 

 opment of the secondary nerve, which constitutes a morphological 

 resemblance to Triticum monococcum. And, on the other hand, I 

 found forms of T. monococcum aegilipoides with the secondary tooth 

 less developed than any that Kornicke had ever seen. We may 

 presume that these were transitional forms. 



° See Aaronsohn, A., and Schweinfurth, G., Die Auffindung des wilden 

 Emmers (Triticum dicoccum) in Nordpaliistina, in Altneuland Monatsschrift 

 fur die wirtschaftliche Erschliessung Palastinas, Berlin, July-August, 1906, 

 nos. 7-8, pp. 213-220; also Prof. Dr. G. Schweinfurth in Vossische Zeitung, 

 September 21, 1906, and in Annales du Service des Antiquites de l'Egypte, 1906. 



6 Schweinfurth, G., Ueber die von A. Aaronsohn ausgefiihrten Nachforschun- 

 gen nach dem wilden Emmer (Triticum dicoccoides Kcke.). In Berichte der 

 Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft, 1908, vol. 26 a, pt. 4, 1908, pp. 309-324. 



180 



