By Mounir Ballout | Staff Writer

Spring has come at AUB and with that so have the flowers. Watching how the scenery slowly changes with time as spring progresses and different flowers bloom into life is what makes spring such a joyous and pleasant time of year. It is for this very reason that if I would have to pick a favorite season, Spring would likely be the winner.

Throughout my daily usual campus strolls from one building to the other, I couldn’t help but notice the vast multitude of spring flowers and the colorful scenes. This got me thinking of all the different native Mediterranean wildflowers that give spring in the Mediterranean its signature liveliness. From dandelions to poppies, one type of flower in particular stood out to me.

I had rarely ever remembered seeing this flower type around the coastal regions of Lebanon before, but it seemed to be all around AUB’s campus. It was almost a bit mysterious.

My immediate conclusion was that it could have been introduced by a member of staff or faculty and that the flower started colonizing much of the campus grounds. This suspicion of mine grew when I accidentally stumbled upon a small sign with the label ‘Native Mediterranean flowers’ conveniently placed right by a growth of these peculiar flowers.

This began my quest to attempt to find the origins of this flower, one that would prove to be quite the dive into many different rabbit holes. Initially, I remembered finding a flower that seemed to resemble my flower of question in the Jabal Moussa Biosphere Reserve area during my hike there a while back. After going through the reserve’s webpage and published articles I was somewhat surprised to find papers on the species Cyclamen libanoticum, native to the reserve’s land area, which had flowers that looked exactly like our campus flower in question. I now thought that this flower, the Cyclamen libanoticum, was for sure introduced into AUB’s campus for research purposes or some sort of botanical project.

A trip through some mountains a few weeks after, however, would bring me to a completely different revelation. With a purposeful keen eye out, I spotted the flower growing outside of its native region of the Jabal Moussa biosphere reserve.

This meant that this mini mystery wasn’t going to end the way I had initially thought. After doing more research, things slowly began clearing up. Turns out Lebanon is home to a multitude of different species from the genus Cyclamen, and many of the species in the genus Cyclamen have flowers that look very similar. The ‘mystery’ flower I had been searching for is most likely Cyclamen persicum, a flower that grows a lot more commonly in lower altitude areas throughout the Mediterranean and surrounding regions.

Through this all, I’ve become even more astounded and captivated by nature’s exquisite beauty and the natural diversity that the AUB campus has to offer. I’m all the very bit more excited to continue observing and documenting the changing natural dynamics and scenes throughout the different seasons.