Tag Archives: The Jerusalem Catalogue of Palestine Plants

While looking through the online catalogue of the Library of Congress for photos of gardens and landscapes, I keep coming across pictures by the American Colony of Jerusalem.

The American Colony was a Christian utopian society established in Jerusalem in 1881 by Americans Anna and Horatio Spafford. Its whole story is very interesting, but long, so you can read about it here and here and here.

Around 1898, a member of the colony, Elijah Meyers, began photographing places and events around the region and eventually formed a photography service that earned income for the group. He was later joined in the endeavor by Lewis Larsson and G. Eric Matson, among others. When the colony dissolved in the early 1930s, Matson and his wife took over the studio and its archives and renamed it the Matson Photo Service.

Matson moved to California in 1946.   He  began donating negatives and contact sheets to the Library of Congress in the 1960s.

Among the over 20,000 images in the Matson Collection are about 200 photos of “wild flowers of Palestine.” In 1907, the Colony had published The Plants of the Bible and, in 1912, The Jerusalem Catalogue of Palestine Plants.  The group also sold photographs and stereographs from its Jerusalem store and contributed pictures to National Geographic articles.

The photos that I’ve chosen are best seen in a larger size, so please click on the first thumbnail below to scroll though them.  The plant names come from the images’ original labels.