New Israeli website gets down to the roots of nature's medicine chest

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a day ago

For the first time, an open-access website called Florapal serves as a botanical encyclopedia of plants native to the Holy Land.
Plants – their leaves, fruit, and other parts – have served as mankind's medicine cabinet for thousands of years. For most of the millennia, there were no pills or synthetic medicines; instead, healers recognized the benefits of plants that grew nearby to treat a wide variety of diseases and conditions, from abdominal pain, arthritis, kidney problems, memory loss, and asthma to gout, heart palpitations, infertility, infections, and cancer.
Numerous plants that have grown in this region can be found in other parts of the world, too, but this area is particularly rich in species, some unique only to Israel, with some 2,700 different types of plants, trees, and shrubs growing in a wide variety of terrain, including Mediterranean, mountainous, and desert areas.
The fact that they were used does not guarantee that they are all effective or even that they are not harmful, but many could be synthesized and turned into contemporary pharmaceuticals if proven safe and potent.
The Holy Land's botanical encyclopedia
Now, for the first time, an open-access website called Florapal (at florapal.org/) serves as a botanical encyclopedia of plants native to the Holy Land – an area botanically known as 'Flora Palaestina' – a term first used by Linnaeus in the 18th century to describe plants native to this region today. It comprises the State of Israel, the Palestinian Authority (Judea and Samaria or West Bank), Gaza, and western Jordan.
The site itself describes 316 native species and over 2,000 uses, including medical as well as non-medical applications such as food, spice, soap, dye, beverages, cosmetics, perfume, cleaning products, preservatives, veterinary care, agriculture, poison, and insect repellents. Ceremonial and ritual uses that included magical protection from the 'evil eye' that was offered by traditional healers are also included.
An analysis of data in the ethnobotanical website of Flora Palaestina reflects some interesting trends of changing patterns of plant use in this region during the mid-20th to the 21st century. The term Flora Palaestina, however, has nothing to do with politics, Palestinians, or Philistines. It was first used by Carl Linnaeus, the 18th-century Swedish biologist and physician who is famous for his work in taxonomy – the science of identifying, naming, and classifying organisms (plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and more). In the 2nd century, Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed the territory of Judea as Palaestina as part of an effort to suppress Jewish nationalism after the Bar Kochba revolt and erase the memory of the Jewish presence there.
Florapal – an English-language website but with colloquial plant common names also provided in Hebrew and Arabic – is the first of its kind. Containing a search engine and photographs, it was created by combining previously unpublished surveys of plant use by Jewish and Arab populations in this region (between 1950 and 1979) with later surveys among the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza (1996-2016).
The website provides for the first time in English a systematic and detailed description of the traditional uses of over 316 species of Flora Palaestina; the contents are 'a rich legacy that is rapidly being lost as societies develop and modernize,' said Dr. Sarah Sallon, who established 30 years ago and continues to run the Natural Medicine Research Center (NMRC) of the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem who trained as a physician and worked for many years as a pediatric gastroenterology specialist.
She initiated the Florapal project and headed the team that established the website. 'Sadly, according to recent surveys, some 400 species are now on the 'Red List' of endangered species, while in the West Bank, about 5% are critically endangered,' she said in an extensive interview with The Jerusalem Post.
SHE AND her team, together with Palestinian researchers at BERC (The Biodiversity and Environmental Research Center in Til Nablus), have just published a peer-reviewed article about the website in the journal Ethnobotany Research and Applications titled 'Florapal an ethnobotanical website of Flora Palaestina reflects changing patterns of plant use in this region during the mid-20th to 21st century.' The detailed article will undoubtedly arouse interest among professionals and others who care about botany and this region.
Information for the Florapal website is based on combining two important ethnobotanical resources. The first is the previously unpublished ethnobotanical surveys (in Hebrew) of the late Dr. David Zaitschek of the Hebrew University's Faculty of Medicine, describing plant use amongst Jewish and Arab populations in the mid-20th century. A botanist and bacteriologist, Zaitschek headed the botanical laboratories at the university's botany department. The archive situated in his lab consisted of a cardex containing several thousand alphabetically indexed, handwritten notes he made in Hebrew.
The second contribution is based on surveys of plant use carried out by BERC in the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza in the early 2000s.
When reaching Florapal, one sees on the screen a statement to which all users have to agree – that those involved don't endorse or recommend the use of any species or plant preparations, and that the information 'is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment and the authors of this site do not purport to provide any medical advice... They are used only by the authors to suggest potential or possible activity and are not intended as scientific evidence nor a recommendation for a particular remedy or use. Always seek professional advice from your physician before consuming any plant for medicinal or other purposes.'
Today, hospitals and clinics have replaced healers, while village economies once dependent on local plant resources have largely been replaced by manufactured and imported goods. As a result, said Sallon, 'a rich legacy of plant use acquired by Jews and Arabs over hundreds of years is rapidly being lost.'
The current study is part of a larger project between Israeli and Palestinian researchers supported by USAID-MERC (United States Agency for International Development-Middle East Regional Cooperation Program). Her partners included Dr. Mohammed Ali-Shtayeh, director, and his staff at BERC; Dr Ori Fragman-Sapir of the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens; and Dr Elaine Solowey of the Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava.
The Talmud, Mishna, and Midrashic sources provided major insights into the economic, cultural, and historical uses of local species in antiquity. Over the following centuries, traditional knowledge was passed down verbally from generation to generation within local Arab communities and by Jewish immigrants to the region from Middle Eastern countries that share many of the same species. The plants were also used as spices, dyes, perfumes, and cosmetics, in rope- and basket-making and clothing, and as raw materials for building.
The rich diversity of Flora Palaestina
BY THE 20th century, comprehensive systematic studies on Flora Palaestina were carried out by the famous Israeli botanists Prof. Michael Zohary and Prof. Naomi Feinbrun-Dothan, based mostly on plants deposited in the herbarium of the Hebrew University. More recently, quantitative assessments on plant use in the West Bank and Gaza documented by Ali-Shtayeh and his team have been published in peer-reviewed journals.
Zohary wrote in 1973 that 'the rich diversity of Flora Palaestina has been associated with this region`s varied topography, climate, and soil, including broad expanses of alluvial soils with rich weed flora and abundant multi-regional types; Mediterranean coast with typical sand dune vegetation; Judean mountains containing Mediterranean forest and maquis [shrub] vegetation; Judean desert with Irano-Turanian vegetation; a desert landscape with tropical savannah, salines, and rock-floored 'hammadas' [a type of desert landscape consisting of high, barren, hard basalt plateaus where most sand has been removed.'
'The website draws attention to an important historical legacy, the urgent need for conservation of many of these species, their continuing importance to a healthy environment and a potential source of novel foods, natural products and new drugs,' Sallon stressed.
'When we analyzed the data in the website ' Sallon continued, 'we found that 50 species are still being used for the same conditions that were utilized seven decades ago,' 'These include diarrhea and dysentery, as well as diabetes, arthritis, kidney stones, coughs, cold, eye and ear infections, high blood pressure, improving memory, and cancer. Newer uses, however, that were not shown in the earlier Zaitschek surveys but appeared in the later BERC survey, showed some plants now being used for conditions like weight loss and high cholesterol, problems increasingly common in the 21st century. Many uses also relate to very well-known flora, for example, the olive tree that can be used not only to make olive oil but also to treat many medical problems, Sallon added.
'Based on these fascinating traditional uses, we have used these plants to previously study and publish with scientists at Hadassah and the Hebrew University Medical Faculty, how effective they are in the lab, including against conditions like cancer and Alzheimer's disease. One must be careful, however, as some plants or parts of them can be really toxic, she added. Unripe almonds, for example, can be very dangerous, while parts of the rhubarb plant should not be consumed.
She concluded that 'Florapal is an important educational resource that preserves the historical legacy of plant use in this region, contributing to their conservation, research, and development.'
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