The heat of July–August? One of the harbingers of autumn – The squill – Is already here.
Shahaf Retter, director of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel’s Carmel Coast Field School, which is located in Ma'agan Michael, documented a lone squill in the field school area over the weekend – One of the most beautiful plants that announce the end of summer and the approach of autumn.
"The squills are the harbingers of autumn," Retter says. "During the winter, their leaves perform photosynthesis, produce sugar (energy) and store it in the bulb. With the arrival of autumn, when the days begin to shorten and all the flowers have already finished blooming, the squills sprout an inflorescence stalk thanks to the energy stored in the bulb and benefit from a lack of competition for pollinators. Although the peak blooming of the squills is usually in September, around the holidays, the first squills have already begun to bloom on the Carmel coast."
Who are you, squill? The common squill is a wild plant that blooms in all parts of the country. It stands out in the landscape as a wand with a single flowering stalk and dozens of whitish flowers arranged along its upper part on short stalks like a spike. At the blooming stage, the squill has no green leaves (they will appear at the beginning of winter). The blooming starts from the bottom, and every day a different group of about 30 flowers opens above the previous ones, and the flowers that opened the previous day wither.
A single flower is about 1 cm. in diameter, it has six petals that are pure white on the inside, while on the outside a green longitudinal stripe runs through their center. They also reflect ultraviolet radiation.
The squill belongs to a group of flowers with a thickened root or bulb (geophytes) known as "harbingers of autumn." Its bulb is very large, its diameter can reach up to 25 cm. Some say that Joshua Bin-Nun marked the borders of the tribal lands when the Israelites arrived in the country by planting squill bulbs. Since there are toxic substances in the bulb, (most) animals do not eat the bulbs and the borders remain marked and clear during the blooming season, and there is no need for "surveyors" to mark the fields in cases of disputes.