Biblical Botany

> Adam & Eve fell, not through eating an apple, but an apricot.

> The "rose" of the Bible is perhaps an oleander, perhaps a narcissus, certainly not a rose.

> Lilies as we know them today are not native to the Holy Land. The lily of the Old Testament is usually the lotus or iris; the "lilies of the field" which outshone Solomon are anemones.

> The locusts John the Baptist ate are not bugs, but the flat seed pods of the carob tree--which are also the husks fed to the swine and the Prodigal Son. They can now be bought in the markets of Manhattan's lower East Side as "St. John's bread."

Thousands of fascinated spectators learned all this and many another bit of Biblical botany at the annual International Flower Show in Manhattan last week, where the most popular single exhibit was the New York Botanical Garden's show of some 75 plants mentioned in the Bible--everything from a young cedar of Lebanon to the sort of bulrushes (papyrus plants) among which the infant Moses was hidden.

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