Questions this record gets asked.
Each page gives the answer in its first lines and then the evidence, with every source named. Several of the usual answers are wrong, and the pages say so.
- What is the national flower of Palestine?
There are two answers and both are correct. The designated national flower is the Faqqua iris.
- What is the national tree of Palestine?
The olive — الزيتون, Olea europaea. Every Palestinian will tell you so, and every Palestinian is right.
- Is the poppy the national flower of Palestine?
No. Palestine's national flower is the Faqqua iris, adopted in 2016.
- What is za'atar?
A plant, before it is anything else. The mixture in the jar is named after it, not the other way round.
- What is the hyssop of the Bible?
It is za'atar, زعتر, the grey-green wild herb Palestinians still gather, and it is not the garden plant sold as hyssop.
- What is akkoub?
Akkoub is a spiny thistle that Palestinians eat, called gundelia or tumble thistle in English.
- Is there akkoub in Gaza?
The national checklist says yes. Nothing that can be checked confirms it.
- What is khubeza?
Khubeza is wild mallow (in English, simply mallow), and its name comes from bread.
- What is maramia?
Maramia is wild sage — Salvia fruticosa — the herb Palestinians put in the teapot.
- What wild greens do Palestinians gather?
Mallow first, then the cyclamen leaf, arum, dock and wild chicory. Of 190 people interviewed in the northern West Bank in 2006, خبيزة khubeza was named by 129, زعمطوط za'amtut by 99, لوف loof and حميض hummeid by 84 each, and هندباء hindbeh by 70.
- What is the lily of the field?
It is not a lily, and the verse never says it is. The Greek of Matthew 6:28 reads krina tou agrou — showy flowers of open country — and names no species at all.
- What is the “Wild Flowers of Palestine” series?
It is a photographic survey of this flora made in Jerusalem by the American Colony Photo Department, roughly 1900 to 1920.
- How many wild plants grow in Palestine?
1,710 native taxa in the West Bank alone, and 1,826 across Palestine as a whole.
- How many olive trees has Israel destroyed?
Every figure in wide circulation predates Gaza. The FAO and the UN Satellite Centre find 90 per cent of Gaza's olive orchards damaged.