Plants of the Bible: Flowering Rush

Butomus umbellatus, Flowering Rush,
Hebrew: בוציץ סוככני, Arabic: البوطي الخيمي

Scientific name:   Butomus umbellatus L.
Common name   Flowering Rush
Hebrew name:   בוציץ סוככני
Arabic name:   البوطي الخيمي
Plant Family:   Butomaceae, בוציציים


Life form:   Geophyte
Stems:   Fleshy rhizomes; up to 150 cm; cylindrical stalks
Leaves:   Rosette arrangement, alternate, three angled, fleshy, twisted ends
Flowers:   3 large pink petals; 3 sepals under the petals are also pink and look like small petals; Inflorescences with 20-25 flowers;
Fruits / pods:   Dark brown, beaked fruits, 1 cm long, and split at maturity to release the seeds
Flowering Period:   April, May, June, July, August
Habitat:   Humid habitats
Distribution:   Mediterranean Woodlands and Shrublands
Chorotype:   Euro-Siberian – Med – Irano-Turanian
Summer shedding:   Ephemeral


Derivation of the botanical name:

Butomus, bous, ox; temmo, to cut; in allusion to the sharp leaf margins; boutomus, boutomon was the ancient Greek name for a sedge.

umbellatus, furnished with umbels.
The Hebrew name: בוציץ, bozitz, from בצה, biza, marsh.

  • The standard author abbreviation L. is used to indicate Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778), a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, the father of modern taxonomy.

Flowering-rush spreads through rhizomes and rhizome branches that break off to form new plants. Bible resources:

  1. Genesis 41:2
    And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow.
  2. Job 8:11 Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow without water?

    (עֵשֶׂב וְסוּף הַגְּדֵלִים בִּמְקוֹם מַיִם: “יִשְׂגֶּה-אָחוּ בְלִי-מָיִם?” (איוב ח יא)

‘Achu’ in Genesis 41:2, 18 is translated as “meadow,” the same word ‘Achu’ is found also in Job 8:11, and translated as “flag. According to Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius (1786 – 1842), a German orientalist and Biblical critic, achu is an Egyptian word denoting the vegetation of marshy ground, a bulrush or any marshy grass (particularly that along the Nile), flag, meadow.
Even-Shoshan dictionary agrees with the former, and says: Egyptian ‘acha’ was green; Aramaic: אחוא , Achua.