Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
General Subjects => Travel / Places to Visit => Topic started by: DaveM on December 04, 2011, 01:40:36 PM
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Just returned from a very enjoyable trip to Jordan led by Oron Peri. Not a huge plant list but some very choice things to share with you. In addition to the plants we also visited the Dead Sea, Jarash, Petra and Wadi Ram in the south. Wall-to-wall sunshine during our stay, but quite cold, especially in the desert. It'll take me a few days or so to download and process the photos (things to do and all that), so forgive me if I just whet your appetites with a small offering:
Crocus moabiticus - on limestone to west of Madaba.
Many thanks Oron for leading such an excellent trip - much enjoyed being in the field with you!
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Welcome home, David.... you lucky man !
We'll be patient.... your report on the trip will be worth waiting for, I know 8)
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Oh my, David ... I'm not really a bulb man, but that crocus is beautiful! I await your future postings with relish.
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What a fantastic plant :o! Ik look forward to see more Jordanian bulbs at some stage!
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That will be a bit sticky won't it Cliff?
Oh my, what a magnificent thing is Crocus moabiticus.
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That will be a bit sticky won't it Cliff?
You know your onions, Lesley! :-*
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Actually, I don't very well, at all, only the very few I grow but when they're fried gently in a little butter and served with steak.......Mmmmmmmm!!!
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Looking forward to more ... and would you like to come and give another talk in Norfolk in 2012?
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Thanks for being patient folks, first few batches of pics coming up.
Tony, it would be a pleasure - email me please.
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Jordan is a relatively small country and the interesting part from a botanical and historical perspective is the Jordan "rift" and the mountainous area that borders it to the east. The eastern plateau towards Iraq and Saudi Arabia is desert. Our journey (Greentours for the AGS) took us the length of these mountains and a visit to the Dead Sea. The northern part of the country is typically Mediterranean (pic1), whilst the south is dominated by rock and sand deserts.
The latter is typified by Wadi Rum, located some 60 km east of Aqaba on the Red Sea with its mountains of Cambrian sandstone towering over the sandy bottom of the wadis. This desert is an amazing sight, particularly in good conditions with its ever changing quality of light.
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More pics of Wadi Rum.
Wind scuptures on the rock faces.
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Water is not far beneath the surface in the sand of the wadi and this supports deep rooted plants such as this Acacia tortilis subsp. raddiana, which has been neatly cropped by camels.
The second pic shows what has been named the Seven Pillars of Wisdom - some aspects of the tourism here are now headlining the "Lawrence of Arabia" theme....... But note that at the base of the Seven Pillars is dark coloured rock beneath the main sandstone of the cliffs. The dark rock is Precambrian in age and impervious. Thus, there are springs at intervals along this contact where it is exposed in the parts of Wadi Rum near to the village of Rum and these give rise for example to scattered lines of palms, figs (Ficus pseudosycamorus) and Retama.
In fact, farther south where the Cambrian sandstone is at depth, it has been proved to be a good aquifer. The Jordanians and Saudis are now building pipelines from this aquifer to pump much needed potable water to their cities.
Citrullus colocynthis - the desert water melon, not good, very bitter to the taste. Apparently best to dry the pods and use as musical instruments!
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The hammada - Hammada scoparia
The desert is a hard place to live, but it is the home to the bedouin. The preferred mode of transport these days seems to be the jeep rather than these "ships of the desert".
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The Wadi Rum area is really the start of the sandy desert which extends south into Saudi Arabia. To the north the mountains are bare rocky desert. Her though there are relics of wetter, Mediterranean times with scattered plants and small stands of trees such as Juniperus phoenicia, Quercus coccifera and Pistacia atlantica. All of these are old specimens, there are no juvenile plants. The Pistacia here is said to be 900 years old!
This area receives very little rain each year and has been particularly sparse these past seven years. Yet here is found Crocus pallasii subsp haussknechtii.
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Crocus pallasii subsp. haussknechtii
No rain needed for flowering; no roots at flowering time; leaves will come when there is moisture!! Note the dried leaves from a previous year - there can be as many as 17.
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A few more Crocus pallasii subsp haussknechtii to show variation in the single site we visited.
A feature of these crocus that inhabit such dry areas is that the anthers curl over the style to assist pollination. Pollinating insects are few and far between in the autumn and winter months and the crocus flowers seem to do this soon after first opening.
These crocus seem to be well camouflaged and are impossible to spot from a moving vehicle. You have to know where to look - so we were extremely lucky to have Oron as our guide.
To be continued ............
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Thanks for sharing this wonderful trip Dave. Such conditions are quite hard to imagine when everything here is green and lush at present. It must seem almost a miracle to find the crocus growing in such a place. I look forward to your next posts. :)
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Super pix Dave !
What a formidable scenery ... and the Crocus... :o :o :o
Thanks for sharing !
Look forward to see more !
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Enjoyed your pictures Dave and the accompaning commentary; a very stark and imposing landscape.
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David, what fine photos! :o :o :o
Тhank you! :)
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Thank you. Yes, under favourable conditions the desert is very beautiful, particularly when there has been rain and it flowers - you have to be really lucky for that. However, life becomes very difficult during sand storms. On the morning we left visibility in the distance became zero as the sand swirled......
Awesome is a much overused word these days, but I feel it is justified in describing Petra, the ancient city of the Nabataeans. The historic city of Petra is hidden away in the rocky mountains (panorama below in the valley left to right of the middle distance). The modern town of Petra is shown right in the panorama.
The city is accessed through a ravine called the Siq and no more than a few tens of metres wide and flanked by walls of sandstone several hundred metres high. The Siq was carved out during flash floods. The Nabataeans dammed the entrances to prevent flooding and to store water.
On emerging into the city the first thing you see is the most superbly preserved facade, commonly known as the Treasury. The stone masonary is exquisite. The Nabataean column is a magnificent example, clearly adapted from the classical Greek column heads.
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The extent of the excavations at Petra is huge- just a couple of examples.
There is little evidence at Petra itself of decorations to the rooms (tombs), but at nearby Little Petra one of the rooms has a beautifully intricate plaster painting.
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A few plants from this area ..... some of them relics of its former Mediterranean climate.
Juniperus phoenicia
Daphne linearifolia - quite the most miserable daphne in my opinion, though it did have a moderately nice scent.
Solanum elaeagnifolium
Thymelea hirsuta
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very interesting Dave, thanks for posting.
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A visit to Jordan cannot be complete without seeing the Dead Sea at first hand - and quite a bizarre experience too. Within the Jordanian "rift" valley, it is of course the lowest level on Earth reached on land, being some 424 m BELOW sea level. The approach road from Amman clearly states when you are at normal sea level. A dip in the hypersaline lake is a must - just the once. It is 23 degrees C and ten times more salty than the "normal" ocean, so tastes abolutely vile. Floating is instantly achievable - in fact it's more or less impossible not to float - even for me as a non-swimmer in my usual attepts at acting as a drowning whale! However, don't get the salty water in your eyes or in skin abrasions - very sore.
Some parts of the shore display terraces revealing the lowering of water level due to evaporation. Lowering of the level has occurred since there is now no refilling of the Dead Sea by the River Jordan. Each of these levels contains gravels and layers of salt formed at the sea margin through evaporation. The exposed salt is partially dissolved during rainy periods producing runnel-like features similar to those we see on limestones - yes, this is a form of karst.
Evaporation this year has lowered the water level by a staggering 1.2 m.
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Away from the Dead Sea the Jordanian "rift" is an incredibly fertile area - through extensive irrigation crops are grown throughout the year. Some of the indigenous flora can still be seen and is greatly influenced by plants originating in the Sudan which spread northwards through the rift valley and reached Jordan in wetter times. Thus we see:
Acacia tortilis subsp. raddiana
Calytropis procera - the seed pods of this contain a white woolly mass which, when twisted together, was used in the past as the wick for oil lamps.
Ziziphus spina-christi (one of the candidates as Jesus' crown of thorns)
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OK, after the preamble, let's now get down to the good stuff in the Mediterranean zone. just a few pics of the scenery. The dominant tree in this area is the Jerusalem Pine, Pinus halepensis.
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There's also Arbutus andrachne, the strawberry tree with its wonderful fruits.
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;D ;D ;D ;D
.... and here come the bulbs (I know that's what you've been waiting for ;) )
One of the most common is Biarum pyrami, growing even in some of the dryest areas
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The diminutive Colchicum tauri, from a locality not far from Crocus moabiticus.
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Colchicum stevenii - growing in large numbers at Ajlun Castle and at several other sites.
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Cyclamen persicum var. autumnale
usually flowers emerge before the leaves, except when rains come early as they did this year, about 3/4 weeks before our visit. The type persicum was also in leaf at some of the localities.
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Sternbergia clusiana
This is such a stunning species, I feel. I have seen this several times before in Turkey but never in such a floriferous state with many multiflower clumps.......
Wish I could grow and flower this here :( :(
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And more Sternbergia clusiana....
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Bulb of Sternbergia clusiana shrouded in papery covering from previous years. Good insulation from the searing summer heat.
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We have some amazing and wonderful "trip" threads on the Forum but this must be up there with the very best, for me anyway, with some history, some scenery, some geography and fabulous plants of course.
A question Dave, can one go into the buildings in the old city and see the rooms or can they only be seen from the outside?
I'm sure I heard somewhere the other day, something on TV probably, that living organisms had been found in the Dead Sea, could even have been some kind of fish, in spite of the extreme salinity.
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Thank you Lesley for your kind comments.
Yes, one can enter most of the rooms, or are they tombs, in Petra. The only one that I recall being closed off was at Little Petra where the painted plasterwork was displayed. Just put the camera through the iron railings and snap away. Most of the rooms are just rectangular chambers carved out of the rock. There are tooling marks all over. Some of the rooms contain a stone bench around 3 sides, but there is little else except in a few which contain a carved sandstone bowl, said to be for sacrificing.....
Some of the walls and ceilings display natural iron oxide staining in the sandstone (liesegang markings - these arise as a result of fluids with Fe-oxide migrating through the rock. Some are quite spectacular - see pic below.
I'm not sure that there are any macrofauna. But I also recall hearing something recently that the Dead Sea isn't totally dead; something about a bacterium or other microflora/fauna???
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And now for some more crocus............ ;D
Crocus hermoneus subsp. palaestinus, from west of Amman
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Dave - when I lived in Israel we used to go up to the Dead Sea supposedly to cleanse the skin (actually with any cuts it wasn't much fun) and I recall being told then that only algae and bacteria were present: the salinity is too high for fish and with recent evaporation salinity will be even greater unless there is compensation from fresh water springs.
Thanks for sharing the photos, I hope that they will form the basis of a future presentation.
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Hi Frazer - I chose not to go for the black mud all-over-body treatment that is supposed to be so good for the skin (no chance for me anyway - too many hours in the sun on fieldwork). Folk who tried this found it difficult to remove afterwards.......
Yes, the whole structure of the water in the Dead Sea changed dramatically after Israel started taking so much water from the Jordan. Before then the Dead Sea had two layers: a hypersaline layer (crystallising salts) beneath a much less saline surface layer. Some while after pumping started, the two layers mixed so that now there is only one hypersaline water mass.
See what I can do..... ;D
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Superficially very similar to C hermoneus subsp. palaestinus is this new species. Quite variable in colour also. However, the corm tunic is distinct, having a slightly reticulate pattern - different from hermoneus which has a papery tunic.
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Crocus hyemalis - a lovely species this and quite variable populations, particularly with markings on the reverse of the tepals and in the yellow or orange style.
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More Crocus hyemalis
Some good clumps too.
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And now finally.... a few more pics of Crocus moabiticus
Limestone substrate, stony marly soil; west of Madaba
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Last few Crocus moabiticus
And sunset over the Roman city of Jerash to end with 8) 8) 8)
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Wow, Dave - a very interesting report with many 'to-die-for' plants, many thanks!!!
Please tell us, why do you or Oron think that the photos above show a new species
and not Crocus cancellatus to which it looks similar from the flowers
and also from the reticulated corm tunic?
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Thank you so much for showing these Dave ! :D
Not only formidable plants but also great photography ! The landscapes are simply awesome and the Crocus... the Sternbergia... :o :o :o Superb !
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Please tell us, why do you or Oron think that the photos above show a new species
and not Crocus cancellatus to which it looks similar from the flowers
and also from the reticulated corm tunic?
Thomas,
It is impossible to tell apart C. cancellatus from C. hermoneus only by the flower, they are almost identical.
The new species which grows in the area of Ajlun in Jordan and in the southern part of the Golan heights has a particular corm tunic which is a mix of papery and reticulated tunic, not as the one of hermoneus [papary] and C. cancellatus [reticulated].
The first layer is reticulated but under it is papery.
Interestingly it depends on water in order to flower which is not the case of the other two.
It might be somesort of an intermediate form between the two species.
Geographically it is isolated and situated in the middle between the distributions of Cancellatus cancellatus, cancellatus damascenus, hermoneus palaestinus and hermoneus hermoneus however never in mixed populations as it occurs occasionally with the other species.
Attached a photo of the 3 corms together.
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Sternbergia clusiana
This is such a stunning species, I feel. I have seen this several times before in Turkey but never in such a floriferous state with many multiflower clumps.......
Wish I could grow and flower this here :( :(
Those S. clusiana have me drooling. I've had a bulb for 10 years & never seen a flower.
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Thanks Oron. Your comparision shows the different corm tunics much clearer, on Dave's photo the it looks stronger reticulated. In every case an interesting plant. Do you have a phylogenetical result - I guess you know the girl who can make this?
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:o :o :o Wow! -Dave, thanks a lot for those breathtaking pictures! Great topic - definitely a trip on my wish list - and if somehow possible with the same guide...
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Fantastic report, makes me wish more than ever that I can go there one day.
(I have emailed about dates for 2012)
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The stone masonary is exquisite. The Nabataean column is a magnificent example, clearly adapted from the classical Greek column heads.
It seems strange to see those stylised Acanthus leaves on the column capitals as I suppose there were probably no Acanthus leaves in Jordan. The Nabataeans must have just copied the Greek Corinthian column heads rather than designing their own. But then of course Greek architecture has been copied everywhere. My flat in Glasgow has a complete plaster cornice of similar Acanthus leaves put there by the Victorians.
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Gosh, nearly missed this. Amazing! 8) Thanks for posting. :) I have forwarded the link to a friend who would be interested in pics of Jordan.
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also missed it >:(
thank's a lot for this report, it should have been a very nice trip, as usual with Oron.
very good pictures, congratulations
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Superb Dave !!!!!!
Initially we want to subscribe for this tour too.....But due different reasons we changed our plans ...I see that we missed a lot !
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Thanks folks, pleased to share with you as it was such a fantastic trip.
Richard: We saw old flower spikes of Acanthus (A. syriacus??) beside the roads in places in northern Jordan. Interestingly, it seems the Nabataeans didn't directly copy the Corinthian columns - the Acanthus leaves are only present around the lower part of the capital rather than the whole of it in true Corinthian columns. Interestingly also, the Nabataean column base is Ionic in character (I didn't show that).
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It is interesting to know that Acanthus does (and presumably did) grow in the area.
I also note some other plants above the leaves, maybe vines.