It is said that when the Queen of Sheba came to visit king Solomon she made a number of tests in order to verify rumors of his intelligence.
For one of the many tests, she put him into a room full of fake flowers and his task was to find the one real flowers. The room had hundreds of flowers made of pottery, wax, material, and glass.
Each of the flowers was dipped in a different perfume so that Solomon wouldn’t be able to sniff an easy answer.
King Solomon walked into the room and after looking around carefully he picked up the one cyclamen and exclaimed: ‘No human could make such a beautiful and delicate flower. This is the true one!’.
On hearing the exclamation- the humble Cyclamen blushed and bowed her head in shame. To this very day she is still bowed and blushing.
The Cyclamen or Rakefet רקפתas it is called in Hebrew, is a relatively common wild flower in Israel.
The flower grows in the rocky mountainous regions. It flowers between December and April making it one of the longest lasting flowers.
In addition to being common in nature the beautiful flower is also grown quite often in gardens.
The bulbs have been known to reach into their 20’s. As the bulb grows they can support more flowers. Older bulbs can sprout over one hundred flowers in a single season.
Of the 23 types of cyclamen only two grow in Israel. The flowers range in colour from white to vibrant pink.
The Cyclamen Persicum grows over the entire mountains range whereas the Cyclamen Coum grows only in the Meiron mountain and parts of the Golan heights making it a relativerly rare flower.
What a lovely story! And the rakefet- cyclamen- really DOES look like she is blushing in your photograph.