The valley of Esdraelon

1926
November

After working out a plan for an expedition in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, I went together with the agronomist Eittingen to the valley of Esdralon ^[1] where at present the Jewish colonization is concentrated and where Aaronsohn had made the main finds of wild wheat. The vegetation was mainly arboreal. Only during early spring is it possible to see the herbaceous ephemerals to which the wild wheat belongs.

In the foothills of the mountains from which a subterranean stream flows into the Esdralon valley, I actually found a large stand of wild wheat together with an admixture of distichous barley. This was on vacant land with soft, fertile soil surrounding the crops themselves. The wheat here looked distinctly different from what we had collected in Khoran in Syria. The spikes and the spikelets were large, reminiscent of those of cultivated wheat but with rough awns and large grains. This was far from a xerophyte like the Syrian wheat and in essence the plants were close to cultivated wheat.

…

When studying the crops in the valley of Esdralon itself, I found wild wheat in large amounts around the edges and along the boundaries of the fields. There is no doubt at all that it represents a wild relative, very close to cultivated wheat, in particular hard wheat. In contrast to the Syrian wild wheat, the Palestinian one is represented by a great variety of forms, of which K.A. Flaksberger has described a large number of varieties. The fact that it is found together with wild barley suggests that Palestine just like Syria actually belongs to the basic native lands of the most important of the cereals, that is, wheat and the barley. Here, where archeological documents also indicate the presence of ancient civilizations, the main evolutionary links of the crops in question are also found.

The wide valley of Esdralon, with a kind of black soil, is exceptionally favourable for agriculture. The level character of the area makes it possible to do completely mechanized work here. The most productive of the local wheats have been selected and are sown by Jewish farmers.

Notes:

1. Now called the Jezreel valley.
   Picture, in mono, from World of Stereoviews. [↩]

Tagged as: Wheat