Capparis spinosa
Capparis spinosa is one of the flower images identified on the Shroud by botanist Avinoam Danin and Uri Baruch. Danin is a botany professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Uri Baruch is a pollen specialist with the Israel Antiquities Authority. Both men are leading authorities on the flora of Israel.
The visual identification of a Capparis spinosa image seems to confirm some previous plant image identifications by Oswald Sheuermann, a German physicist, and Alan Whanger, a professor at Duke University.
In general, many if not most Shroud scholars have reservations about the reliability of the identification of plant images and the significance of the pollen data.
- Are there plant and flower images?
- What is pareidolia and why is it important in the study of the Shroud?