Blooming in December: Cyclamen – Rakefet – רקפת

December 2019 Kislev תש"פ

What’s in bloom in Israel this month?

Cyclamen – Rakefet – רקפת

Many moons ago I worked in a flower shop in Jerusalem. One day an unhappy customer walked into the shop carrying a rakefet (cyclamen).  She wasn’t happy because it wasn’t flowering anymore. I offered all sorts of potential solutions despite not having a clue what was wrong with it.  She left quite unsatisfied and I felt fairly helpless.  Twenty years later I now have the answer for her - it simply was no longer the season.  As she is also now a very dear friend I hope she reads this and finally gets her answer.

As I hinted at in my November blog the first rakefet leaves had just started appearing and thanks to the heavy rainfall there are more and more peeping out by the day.  The rakefet leaves are the most beautiful leaves in nature because of their intricate patterns.  This pattern provides them with their own identikit.  Why do prisoners have their fingerprints taken?  Because each person has a unique fingerprint that they can be identified by.  Every cyclamen plant has its own individual ‘fingerprint’. Many plants can be growing alongside each other and all the leaves coming out of one bulb will look totally different from the set of leaves coming out of the bulb next to it.  A good mindfulness exercise is to sit down next to a crop of plants and compare the patterns in the leaves.

In the past the young leaves were used like grape vine leaves and would be stuffed with meat and rice however it now has protected flower status and therefore picking them is forbidden.

Thank goodness the rain has started to fall seriously which is about time.  At the same time the rakefet is starting to flower producing a brown reddish stalk supporting a flower with petals that are a strong pink at the bottom and then they change to different hues of white to pink and every shade in between.  This flower needs to be very clever in order to survive the strong winter rains.  In theory these windy stormy days would easily wash away the delicate pollen in the center of the flower.  In order to outwit the rain our little rakefet flower therefore grows upside down.  If you look into the middle of the petals you will be surprised to notice that there is no pollen there.  In order to see the pollen you have to delicately turn the flower upside down or lie on the floor and look underneath the flower.  Most of my blogs will relate at some point to how the flower adapts to survive, spread its seed further, or beat the competition.  It is actually one of my greatest fascinations in nature and it has also helped further the whole scientific field of biomimicry – using tried and tested nature to find sustainable solutions to human problems.

In my June blog about the caper bush I told my first King Solomon fable.  He was known to be a great nature lover as described in the book of Kings “He spoke about plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls.” Kings 1, 4:33.

Here is my favorite story about King Solomon:

It was decided that King Solomon needed a new crown and because he loved the wild flowers so much he went for a walk to choose a flower that would inspire him.  He walked among so many beautiful flowers in an array of bright colours and they all lifted their heads up high so he would see them better and choose one of them.  None of them quite touched him and he carried on wandering getting quite despondent.  Finally he spotted one hidden among the rocks in a delicate shade of pink, hanging its head.  He whispered to it “you are a beautiful flower, so gentle and modest, I will be happy to design my crown to look like you so that whenever I wear it I will remember to be gentle and modest like you.” 

This story will ring true with teachers who tend to choose the child who isn’t shouting out the answer or putting his hand up into the teachers face, instead choosing the one standing quietly and patiently.

The cyclamen season will last for a while now, sometimes starting as early as October and lasting until May.  It is a very common flower found in every part of the country and at Neot Kedumim we will have carpets of them in the following months. They tend to prefer some shade, growing well in the forests and as mentioned in the story they often grow under the shadow of rocks and sometimes even out of rocks as their bulbs wedge in the cracks.  For many years I have had a cyclamen growing out of the drainpipe in my garden but it hasn’t made an appearance this year and every day I eagerly search it out.(Update: it's definitely disappeared, probably washed out by heavy rains, and I hope it has gone to the cyclamen farm in the sky).

In my November blog I mentioned the crocus which wasn’t to be confused with the sitvanit hayore.  This is now blossoming everywhere and it is always out just in time for the festival of Hanukkah.  Inside our homes we light Chanukah candles while in nature this beautiful white flower with its deep yellowy orange center has earned itself the nickname of ‘the first Chanukah candle’.

Photos: Yasmin Maissel