Gedaliah Goldstein
Sep 9, 20151 min
I have just spotted my first chatzavim (commonly known in English as the Sea Squill) of the season, though it seems they have started growing a little while
Despite its yearly appearance, the chatzav doesn’t appear in The Tanach itself, but it is mentioned in the Talmud:
Baba Batra 56a mentions that Yehoshua used the chatzav to mark the borders of each shevets nachala- or portion of land when they divided the land of Israel. The chatzav may be tall and thin but its roots spread out under ground and make it very difficult to remove- as such it was a popular choice for marking boundaries throughout history so that a sneaky neighbor wouldn’t try to change the borders on you (in fact it is still used today by some Israeli-Arabs).
Peace and Blessings :)