White wonder in the Negev: Blooming quarries & endless hikes

The Drimia maritima is one of the most impressive and sophisticated plants I know in Israel. Beyond its visible beauty, in winter or summer, after getting to know the Drimia maritima, the complexity of its storage system and the uniqueness of its flowering, you also learn to appreciate the hidden things on the white page. 

We're all familiar with the stone pillars that rise at the end of summer, heralding the same news that fall is coming automatically. The honeysuckle gained him publicity among the people, being a relatively unusual plant, tall and bearing like the holly holly or the golden holly. Something in this condescension towards blueness, without shame and with great courage, in a season when almost no flower blooms, makes us appreciate it more.

Indeed, the flowering of the Drimia maritima in this period indicates a somewhat strategic "thinking", as far as a thinking plant can be attributed... Imagine a single cold lemonade stand in the hot desert, all you need is a prominent enough sign and everyone will come to you. The honeysuckle lifts itself up, blooms gradually and allows the various insects to enjoy its sweet nectar in exchange for pollination on their part, and all without investing in a maddening smell or a gorgeous color, simply because there is no need, there is no competition.

Each season, the Drimia maritima has a different show. In winter it puts out its amazingly green and fleshy-looking leaves, which seem to be clearly unrelated to the desert landscape. In the spring and at the height of summer, it finds itself mostly underground, with only the dried flowers or the withered flowering columns visible to the naked eye. At the end of the summer and in the autumn, he uses the time for flowering and pollination, in light of the relatively poor market situation. But always, always, its storage organ can be found underground. In light of this fact, the Drimia maritima was used in the past as a kind of border, a separation between plots of land or even a separation between tribal estates ("What is a Drimia maritima? In which Joshua bounded the land for Israel." 22 Nu, 11).

Dear Meir Shalev, in his book My Wild Garden, devotes his own chapter to Drimia maritima, on which he writes, among other things, a paragraph that clarifies the meaning of vegetative reproduction - "Drimia maritima reproduce not only from seeds and diggers, but also through the development of new bulbs in the soil. One day I received a resounding proof of this, Literally. I put two large clay pots with two Drimia maritima bulbs in each. A few years later, when I happened to be standing right next to them, I suddenly heard a strange sound, a kind of dull and loud popping, and one of the pots burst open before my eyes... when I went to take the pair of onions. that I planted in it, I discovered a third onion there, still attached to one of them. It grew and swelled and pressed with force until it broke the pot." 

The stones can be found almost all over the country, but in the Negev they are of course the most impressive, in light of their distinct isolation in front of the clean landscape of the desert. Now the flowering season is starting, in Mitzpe Ramon on the edge of the crater you can already see them in full bloom and in Nahal Havarim near the Ben Gurion Synagogue you can already spot buds that will turn into impressive and noble flowers.

Those interested in viewing the White Wonder should go to the visitor center at Mitzpe Ramon (so in Waze), park and simply walk along the base of the wonderful boardwalk on the edge of the crater. Every once in a while you will get to see impressive clusters of chert blossoms, and this is beyond the amazing view of Makhtes Ramon. It is recommended to arrive relatively early, or towards sunset. For hikers, you can arrive at sunrise and watch a rare and unique phenomenon for places like the crater, gliding clouds. 

It is also possible to reach a Havarim pit, where fresh rocks have slowly begun to emerge - and of course also on Mount Avnon, which is located near Yuraham, you can find some impressive flowering columns. All these places are in Waze and are accessible by private car.