Michael Zohary

Michael Zohary was born in 1898 in Bobrka, a town in Eastern Galicia.[1] He went to Eretz Israel in 1920.[1] After his arrival, he joined a team of research workers at the Hebrew University under botanist Alexander Eig.[1]

In 1931, Zohary, Alexander Eig, and Naomi Feinbrun published the first full analytical flora book in Hebrew.[3] In 1952 he was appointed professor of botany at the Hebrew University. His research covered a wide section of the Middle East.[1]

His departmental work extended well beyond Israel's borders. A 1961 paper on Middle Eastern oak species, produced from his position in the Department of Botany at the Hebrew University, drew on field observations and herbarium collections at institutions including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Herbier Boissier in Geneva, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Edinburgh, the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and Ankara University.[4] That study examined 18 species and 35 varieties and forms of oak across Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Cyprus, and Palestine, discussing their vegetational significance, ecological habitats, and taxonomic relationships.[4]

In 1962, Zohary approached Michael Avishai and asked him to establish a second botanical garden on a 65-acre site near what would become the Knesset and the Israel Museum. Zohary envisioned the garden organized into geographical sections — a design that Avishai later implemented — and the project was initially conceived in part to evaluate the potential of cultivated species for the Israeli market.[5]

Zohary's bibliography encompasses more than 100 papers and books, ranging from field-oriented flora handbooks to broad geobotanical syntheses.[1] Among his collaborative works was the Analytical Flora of Palestine, produced with Alexander Eig and Naomi Feinbrun. The National Library of Israel catalogs a revised and expanded second edition, in its fourth printing, running to 514 pages with illustrations and plant names given in Latin.[6]

Together with Feinbrun, Zohary published the Flora of the Land of Israel in Hebrew and English across three folios issued between 1945 and 1955.[1] A companion illustrated volume, Plants of the Land of Israel in Drawings — with Ruth Koppel as illustrator — was also co-authored with Feinbrun. Its second edition contains 50 pages of illustrated plants followed by 10 pages of explanatory descriptions, with plant names also given in English.[7]

Plant Life of Palestine: Israel and Jordan, published in New York by Ronald Press around 1962, presented Zohary's regional botanical survey in 262 illustrated pages with diagrams and maps; it appeared as part of the Bulletin of the Research Council of Israel, Section D, Botany.[8] His New Analytical Flora of Israel, which reached a sixth printing published in Tel Aviv by Am Oved in 1980, spans 540 illustrated pages.[9]

A major project of Zohary's career was Flora Palaestina, published in Jerusalem by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities between 1966 and 1986. The work spans four volumes issued in eight physical parts, with each text volume accompanied by a dedicated volume of plates.[2] Zohary authored Part 1, covering Equisetaceae to Moringaceae, in 1966 and Part 2, covering Platanaceae to Umbelliferae, in 1972; Naomi Feinbrun-Dothan authored Parts 3 and 4.[2] Comprehensive systematic studies for this project were based largely on plants deposited in the Hebrew University herbarium. Zohary's 1973 description of the region's plant diversity linked it to varied topography, climate, and soils — encompassing Mediterranean sand-dune vegetation, Judean mountain forest and maquis, Irano-Turanian vegetation in the Judean Desert, and desert landscapes with tropical savannah, salines, and rocky hammadas.[10]

In 1973 Zohary published Geobotanical Foundations of the Middle East with G. Fischer in Stuttgart, a two-volume, 738-page work on Middle Eastern botany and phytogeography, with bibliographical references spanning pages 655 to 677.[11] In 1982 he published Plants of the Bible: A Complete Handbook to All the Plants with 200 Full-Color Plates Taken in the Natural Habitat through Cambridge University Press. The volume is cataloged under plants in the Bible, botany, and the plants of ancient Palestine, and discusses 128 plants belonging to the biblical world.[12][13] Other works listed in his bibliography include Géobotanikah (1955) and a 1954 Hebrew work whose title is corrupted in the online reference text.[1]

Across his career, Zohary's research ranged from descriptive taxonomy to broader questions of plant geography and speciation. In his 1961 study of Middle Eastern oaks, he argued that the northern part of the Middle East represented one of the centers of the genus Quercus in Eurasia, citing the region's morphological and genetic variability, intergrading forms, and hybrid swarms as evidence of its importance as a center of speciation.[4] He also discussed the historical mixture of ancient relict elements with species that may have migrated southward from northern Eurasia during the Late Tertiary and glacial periods.[4]

The same study offered precise taxonomic judgments: Quercus boissieri and Q. infectoria were kept as separate species based on their nearly exclusive geographic ranges; Q. ithaburensis was treated as a well-delimited species despite extensive fruit variation; Q. macrolepis and Q. vallonea were judged to lack specific distinction, with the latter treated as a variety; and Q. calliprinos and Q. coccifera were retained as separate species despite observed transitions and hybrids, on the basis of combined morphological and ecological differences.[4] The paper gave particular attention to section Aegilops, which had not been critically reexamined since Kotschy's 1862 work.[4]

Zohary received the Israel Prize in Science in 1954.[1] His comprehensive systematic work on Flora Palaestina was based largely on plants deposited in the Hebrew University herbarium, linking his publications to the university's botanical collections.[10]

His vision for a geographically organized botanical garden near Jerusalem, which he entrusted to Michael Avishai in 1962, resulted in what became the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens.[5] Zohary died in 1983.[1]