Michael Zohary was a leading botanical researcher in Israel, where he served as Professor of Botany at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Zohary was born Michael Schein in Bobrka, Poland. He emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1921, where he worked building roads and trained as a teacher in Jerusalem, completing his studies in 1925. Meanwhile, he privately studied the plants of the country, building up an impressive personal herbarium.
Along with fellow botanists Alexander Eig and Naomi Feinbrun-Dothan, Zohary joined the newly established Hebrew University in 1926, working under the head of the botany department, Otto Warburg. Zohary, Eig and Feinbrun laid the foundations of botanical study in the Middle East, making collecting expeditions in neighbouring countries as well as in Palestine (Israel).
Their early research in determining the plants of Israel was difficult, the only two reference works of use being E. Boissier's 19th century Flora Orientalis and George Post's Flora of Syria, Palestine and Sinai, from the turn of the century. They came up with Hebrew names for plants, informed by the names of plants in the Bible and ratified by the Hebrew Language Committee.
Zohary, Eig and Feinbrun often collected in neighbouring countries, working in the deserts of Transjordan (1927, 1929), Syria (1931) and Iraq. The also went to Lebanon and southern Turkey, Egypt (1940) and Greece (especially Crete). Their first joint work was published as An Analytical Key to the Plants of Palestine.
Zohary received his doctorate from the University of Prague in 1937 for a study of the antitelochoric phenomena in the distribution of plants in the Flora Palaestina region. (Antitelechory is the tendency of plants to prevent wide dispersal of their seeds in order to concentrate new plants in proven habitats of the mother plant). He published other papers on fruit evolution and dispersal, and major monographs on the genera Pistacia, Tamarix and Trifolium. In 1952 he became Professor of Botany at the Hebrew University.
As well as his interest in the plant geography and vegetation of Israel and Jordan, from 1950-1965 Zohary's research paid special attention to Turkey and Iran. He published .The Plant Life of Israel in 1962 and a major article on the vegetation of Iran in the Israel Journal of Botany in 1964. His work on the Flora Palaestina resulted in the publication of the first two volumes, Pteridophyta (1966) and Dialypetalae (1972), meanwhile his major two-volume work, Geobotanical Foundations of the Middle East, appeared in 1973. Zohary's best known work, however, is A New Analytical Flora of Israel (1976, in Hebrew).
Zohary officially retired in 1967, but as Professor Emeritus continued his research, his final book being Plants of the Bible (1982). He died on 15 April 1983 in Jerusalem. The plants Anthemis zoharyana Eig, Bellevalia zoharyi Feinbrun and Stachys zoharyana Eig are named after him.
Sources:
C.C. Heyn, 1984, "Michael Zohary", Taxon, 33(1): 168
A. Shmida and D. Heller, 1983, "Michael Zohary - Giant of Israel Botany", Israel - Land and Nature, 8(4): 33-35.
