MERYEM DİLEK AVCI-REŞADİYE KAZIM YILMAZ İLKOKULU DATÇA

Judas tree flourish by the spring’s arrival. It is known elegant and noble yet delicate with its flowers.

It is called “Judas Tree” in English and “Alberta di Giuda” in Latin languages. It is originally from Palestine. At first the flowers of this tree were white. The story goes back 1980 year from today to Israel’s land.

In Palestine, Jesus and 12 apostles were having supper. Jesus felt one of his apostles may be unfaithful to him. After his last supper due to apostle Yehuda’s whistle blowing to Roman army for 30 silver coins, Jesus was captured, sentenced to death and crucified. Yahuda felt very guilty of what he has done and hang himself to a brunch of a Judas tree. At that moment the Judas tree was very embarrassed and all its flowers turned pink and all the Judas trees dried because of this embarrassment. No Judas tree lives in that area anymore. The Judas trees cannot face the heat and dry land of Palestine anymore and decided to live and console themselves in the magnificent blue and green of Istanbul. They forgot their embarrassment and became the colour of love, excitement and joy to the extent of becoming a subject to many poems from the ancient times to Divan literature and today’s day. They also became the symbol of Istanbul same as tulips. The Judas tree’s flowers appear and disappear suddenly. This makes people sad. It reminds them the contrast of become and be gone, reunite and breakaway. Flowers delicate as a sweetheart; difficult to obtain and difficult to keep. This momentary flowering inspire many poets and they wrote many poems about Judas flowers.