Monte Swatzell: Plants in the Bible span a gamut of ancient, modern varieties

About 125 plants and plant derivatives are noted in the biblical text.

Some are mentioned repeatedly, and some only once.

I have found that the presence of many of these plants has been a concern for today’s botanists since the early identifiers of these plants were not botanists.

In some colloquialism, red fruit is referred to as apples and pinnate leafed trees are all called acacia.

“Lily of the valley” is now believed to have been hyacinth and iris, while “lilies of the field” refers to anemone and crocus.

Cedars might include pines, junipers and others besides cedars.

Other locals and I call junipers — fence post trees — cedars.

I have been corrected by foresters and others of high intellect.

Plant names are like that, being called by different names in different locations.

That is why the botanists were invented.

They have classified all known plants so they can identify and call the same plants by their rightful names, anywhere in the world.

This means that we, the cedar — rather than juniper — people, are in big trouble because we call things by the names our mothers and fathers used and must withstand strong corrective measures to be in step with proper floral terminology.

Biblical lands extended from today’s Italy to Iran and from Greece to Egypt, but most events occurred in the area called the land of Israel or Palestine, on both sides of the River Jordan, where within an expanse of 200 miles the land elevation varies from 10,000 feet above sea level to the Dead Sea, which lies 1,285 feet below the Mediterranean’s level.

Hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters have always been the climate conditions associated with clay, clay-lime, sand, soft limestone and basalt as the intermittent soil types throughout the area, allowing for a wide variety of plants in relatively close proximity.

As described by Moses, it was a land of oil and honey, with much arable land, grass lands and great forests, abundance of good water, a land of hills and plains, and bordered by desert lands.

It was a blessed land, as has been America.

Over the centuries, good soil was decimated, leaving fallow lands and treeless hills and plains.

Since the late 1940s much benficial reclamation of the land for production has occurred using irrigation methods and other conservation practices.

Balms, figs and oil are the only plant products mentioned in the Bible with reference to healing because sole credit was to be given to God, even though God put it all here for us to use, after a gradual learning process.

Regardless of these omissions, the Talmud, which was the basis of religious authority for traditional Judaism, identifies some 70 herbs and other plants with preventive or healing properties.

Since early times, plants and their derivatives have been used as medicines, and even today many of modern healing miracles are the result of plant derivatives and their synthetics, all going back to what has been provided.

Plants, then and now, have been available to the world peoples to use as food, fuel, clothing, housing, transportaion, beauty, arms and shade, while their derivatives have been used in every field imaginable.

Some plants mentioned in the Bible are acacia, algum, almond, almug, aloes, amber, anise, apple, ash, balm, barley, bay tree, bdellium, beans, box tree, bramble, brier, bulrush, calamus, camphire, cane, cassia, cedar, chestnut tree, cinnamon, cockle, coral, coriander, corn, cucumbers, cumin, cypress, date, dredge, ebony, elm, ephraim (wood), fig, fir, fitches, flax, gilead balm, gourd, grain, grape, grass, hareth, hazel, heath, hemlock, hyssop, jacinth, juniper, leek, lentiles, lign-aloes, lily, mandrake, melons, millet, mint, mulberry, mustard, myrrh, myrtle, nettle, nuts, oak, oil-tree, olive, onion, palm, pine, pomegranate, poplar, reed, rose, rue, rush, rye,saffron, shittah tree, spices, spikenard, sycamore, tares, tell tree, terebinth, thistle, thyine wood, tow, vine, wheat, willows, wormwood.

You could also mention the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

More than 3,000 species of Palestine flora are known to exist, but the holy land of Bible days has changed through the years, so we can only get a glimpse of plant life as it was in those days.

Many varieties of many species of many plant families from the Bible list are found throughout the world — some, perhaps, in your own yard.

The plants mentioned in the Bible were often placed there to symbolize God’s mercy, judgment and bounty and to illustrate Jesus’ message.

I like to think that some plants are more beneficial because of this connection.

References: www.americancatholic.org , www.newadvent.org, www.biblicalgardens.org and the King James version of the Bible KJV.

Monte Swatzell is a Johnson County Master Gardener Association Wildbunch Writer from Cleburne.