Lake Genesareth

1926
November

I also went to the lake of Genesareth. ^[1] There fishing is conducted just as it was in the distant past. No doubt the population of ancient Palestine was much larger than the present one: hundreds of structures, long ago fallen into ruins, and thinly populated areas provide a picture of the present. Everything in this area is abandoned, neglected and deserted. The blue lake carries one back to Biblical times. Nazareth is also here. It is surrounded by a thicket of cacti, mainly without spines (Opuntia ficus-indica), that was planted 160 years ago. This indicates that the spineless cactus was known long before Burbank, to whom usually the ‘invention’ of cacti without spines is attributed. The cactus is a typical Mexican plant and the presence of spineless cacti in Palestine indicates a distant provenance of this form. ^[2]

The composition of the kinds of cultivated plants in Palestine largely reflects what is local and endemic; but at the same time, thanks to the large turnover of the populations, one also encounters undoubtedly alien and casual introductions.

I went to the northern border of Palestine, back towards Syria, where the Syrian Khoran imperceptibly crosses over into the Palestinian one. The flora is the same and so are the dry foothills and the hard wheat, the ‘Khoranka’. Turning eastward I went to the Jordan river, which flows out into the Dead Sea and separates Trans-Jordania from Palestine. The bright, dark-blue and narrow band of the river is flanked by a marsh on the Palestinian side. Around the river itself and on a part of the bank, there is a stand of beautiful papyrus (Cyperus papyrus), reaching 2 metres in height. Behind them there is a thicket of oleanders (Nerium oleander) with pink flowers.The oleanders flower in September. From far away it looks as though the entire valley is an endless stretch of pink. The papyrus and oleander bordering the Jordan give it an exceptionally picturesque aspect. The water is clear and potable. A marshy area lines the Palestinian side. Across the river from Palestine, on the Trans-Jordanian highland, a rural extension of Palestine begins where enormous crops of wheat are concentrated.

Notes:

1. This is Lake Kinneret, the biblical Sea of Galilee and Roman Sea of Tiberias. Vavilov’s name — Genesareth — is derived from a small fertile plain on its western side.
   Picture, in mono, from World of Stereoviews. [↩]
2. Luther Burbank certainly did breed spineless prickly pears, possibly by hybridizing two species of Opuntia. More on this later. [↩]