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By: Amots Dafni and Saleh Akel Khativ

The carob fruit is always curved like a horn and hence the foreign name of the carob 'Ceratonia' derived from the Greek word 'Keratos' which means 'horn'. When one wants to point out someone who does not excel in virtue, it is customary to say: "Don't be like the crooked carob fruit, be straight" or in the formulation
Another "crooked like a carob" (اووج زي الخروب, إْوَجْ زَيْ الخَرُّوْ). Someone who is not full of virtues is "like a carob" (mithal il-carob), like the carob) and everyone will understand what we are talking about, after all, we have never seen an honest carob fruit in our provinces.

The fruits of the donkey spit (it's the 'donkey green') look like round yellow cucumbers. When these fruits are yellow and ripe, a light touch is enough and all the contents of the fruit are unexpectedly and forcefully splashed a few meters away. That's why it will be said, about a person who erupts over any trivial thing, "You are like the green of the donkey" (intimithel pekos el hamar, you are like the fokos of the donkey).

The raspberry bushes are extremely tangled and have branched rhizomes that make it very difficult to uproot and eliminate them. When referring to a sleepy person it will be said about him "like a raspberry" The meaning is that it is impossible to get rid of that person as it is difficult to get rid of the raspberry. In the southern Jordan Valley, it is customary to make sticky bandages from the crushed leaves of the sedum bull's tongue. This sticky mixture placed on the wound is called "cow's tongue bandage". To the person who is 'infected', others comment, "Son of man, are you a bandage on the bull's tongue?" (Ya so-and-so, are you Lazkat Hamham?, O so-and-so, are you Lazkat Hamham?). About people who take care of animals and it is difficult to get rid of them, it will be said, "Eating carob is not a problem, the problem is getting rid of it (getting it out of the stomach)"
Add it, the original is not the carob, the original is the inflection). The background to the proverb is that eating a lot of carobs causes constipation and then 'it's hard to get rid of it'.

It is customary to say about a liar, "I swear that the olive tree is a fig" (instead of an olive tree, a fig tree, an oath on a fig tree). This proverb is based on the saying in the Koran that the Prophet swore by the olive and the fig (Surat al-Taanim, 1-4, Uri Rubin's translation): "I swear by the figs and the olives, and by Mount Sinai, and by the land that is safe! We created man in the image of great beauty."

We note that this is the only time the fig is mentioned in the Koran while the olive is mentioned seven times. About people who change positions it will be said "like a mallow leaf follows the sun" (mithal verkat al-khubiza bittvar ala al-shams mithal, like a leaf of the khabeiza follows the sun). While the leaves of the sedge remain solid and green, sometimes until the middle of summer, the leaves of the chives are in a hurry to dry already at the end of spring. Hence the Arab proverb "weaker than chives"
(Adaaf man brukah, weaker than his brokah), this is how it will be said about a person who is weak and weak.

From: Amots Dafni and Saleh Akel Khativ (2017). Plants, demons and wonders - the plants of the Land of Israel in folklore. a new world Tel Aviv

contact: At watsapBy email

Amots Dafni
Amots Dafni
Amots Dafni: Israeli botanist and poet, professor emeritus at the Institute of Evolution and the Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology at the University of Haifa.

More articles from the same reporter

4 תגובות

  1. Hi Amutz
    Glad to see you live here too!
    We would be happy to hear about the Carmel orchids and especially those of the Forties grove.
    Soon the season (pouch orchids and brown bumble bee)

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