IRISES OF JORDAN - THE RECONNAISSANCE by Ian Green 21/04/2009

We’ve been meaning to bring Jordan and Syria into our programme for some time, a natural expansion to the many tours we already run to Turkey, Iran and Georgia. So, at the end of March, I made a reconnaissance visit. Jordan is well known for its fabulous cultural sites, for its desert scenery, and for its great birdwatching, but its flowers have perhaps drawn less attention. Which is a shame because they are very very good. My main target was Irises. There’s around a dozen species in Jordan including four or five (depending on a recent discovery being verified) Oncocyclus species. These spectacular irises inhabit a zone stretching from the Red Sea up through Jordan, Israel and Syria, into Turkey and through into Iran and the Transcaucasia. They are robust plants, often quite short in stature, and have spectacular blooms. Jordan’s fit the bill nicely. One of them, the ‘Black Iris’ is Jordan’s national flower and whilst not exactly pure ‘soot’ it is very very dark. In fact all of the species in Jordan are largely dark with variations on purple-black, darkest cerise and that oddest of colours, a blackish-pink! During my visit I found all the known species, with some spectacular shows of the variable Iris atrofusca, and a great hillside with hundreds and hundreds of architectural Iris bostrensis, a little known species from the Syrian border. Of course one thinks of Jordan as being very arid which indeed much of it is, but the northern highlands in particular have a much more Mediterranean climate, indeed my first night there in the last few days of March would have made a good wild and windy night in Cornwall only a bit colder!

Usually though it is warm and sunny and the spring rains bring on a flush of flowers that would garland the best Mediterranean botanical hotspots. Red was the most noticeable colour. Anemone coronaria in a large red form was common as was the Turban Buttercup, again usually in its rich scarlet form. Mixing with these was Adonis palaestina with flowers almost as large – three wonderful red flowers carpeting hillsides. There were lots of bulbs too, with various Muscaris and Bellevalias, a good variety of Arums, and some great orchids, with local species such as Ophrys flavomarginata as well as Ophrys transhyrcana, Ophrys umbilicata and the more widespread Orchis anatolica and Orchis papilionacea. Jordan has a well-developed protected area network and some of the most productive areas were in the oak woodlands and limestone terraces within these, as well as in the spectacular Wadi Dana in the south of the country. Down here it was much more arid. The cool hills at the top of Dana, where the fabulously situated guesthouse looks out over one of the most amazing views in the Middle East, as the juniper-dotted mountains drop precipitously to the sandy deserts of the Wadi Araba and beyond to the Negev Desert. I drove down the shores of the Dead Sea where the mountains drop to over a thousand feet below sea level before disappearing into the salty water. Fan-tailed Ravens and Tristram’s Grackles flew into wadis free of vegetation. At Dana’s ‘desert’ end I walked at night seeing a Sand Fox, and in the day time the few Acacias in the wadi’s were covered in the bright red blooms of Loranthus acaciae these attracting many Orange-tufted Sunbirds. Jordan is replete with ancient sites. There are many roman sites with Pella a must for our itinerary, as well as Jerash, and crusader castles perch in appropriately craggy situations. And of course there is Petra. There’s plenty in the guidebooks about Petra, and its images often crop up in glossy travel articles or on the TV, but still I was unprepared for the sight of the Treasury, its clean lines hewn into the rosy rock as the afternoon sun lowered. Probably I’d just been seduced into a dream world that is the Siq, the spectacular approach through a kilometre of narrow twisting gorge. There were good hotels, great wild country full of flowers, a good road network, and a very helpful friendly populace. My thanks in particular to the many shepherds who helped me on my search for those irises, particularly the one who, sitting amongst buttercups and anemones with his little herd, managed to communicate the exact location of perhaps the finest population of the spectacular black irises that I saw with just one word and a couple of graphic hand signals!