Lecanora esculenta

Sinai Desert. This species is also supposed to have been the manna of the wandering Israelites. Hedrick contains the following: “The same species was found by Paviot[sic] who procured it in his journey to Ararat, where it is eaten by the natives.” [NB the bibliography, in Hedrick, does not have a citation for an author ‘Paviot.’ It appears that the source for this description is Journey to Ararat, by von Parrot, and that ‘Paviot’ is a typographical error. Hedrick continues: “In some districts of Persia, in 1828, it covered the ground to a depth of five to six inches in so short a period of time that the people thought it had been rained down from heaven.”