This native meadow saffron flower blooming in the Judean Desert is named for Tuvia Kushnir, a brilliant young botanist who already as a young high school student identified several as yet unclassified endemic native species.

It's a species I've not yet had the privilege to see in real life, though I'm delighted to have had the chance to see another species named for him, the charming Tuvia Iris, which also blooms in Israel's desert regions.

Tuvia was born and raised in Kfar Yehezkel, a Jewish village in the lower Galilee founded and supported by the Iraqi Jewish Sassoon Sehayik family, named in memory of one of the Sassoon Sehayik brothers. Last winter I volunteered there several times to help with the olive harvest for one of the village's veteran families.

We were there on Rosh Hodesh Kislev, the start of the month of Kislev during which Hannukah falls. In honour of the coming Hannukah holiday the farmer's wife sent out oily treats: trays to the volunteers and workers out in the field: freshly fried sfinj doughnuts along with freshly made frena bread to dip in fresh fragrant olive oil infused with local herbs and bowls of cured olives. Her grandparents were contemporaries of Tuvia's parents. Some of the olive trees in their grove had been planted back in their day, about 100 years earlier.

Tuvia hiked all over the country all his life, learning its flora firsthand by exploring every corner of the land. As a biology student his professors forecast a brilliant future, a botanical genius with an intuition for finding as yet undiscovered and rare species.

Tragically Tuvia never had the chance to reach his full potential. The British mandate was coming to an end and war was coming.

Tuvia was a student in Jerusalem's Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, living in the nearby village of Issawiya. He created a botanical gardens on the campus, including a special collection featuring every species of iris endemic to the region. His passion for irises is memorialised in a line of Naomi Shemer's poignant ballad to Israel's fallen, "Every Autumn, Giora".

By late 1947 Jerusalem was coming under increasing attacks from Arab militias, the city's Jewish population was under siege, cut off from the rest of the country, supplies of essentials dwindling. Tuvia, like so many young men and women, left his studies and joined the Palmach to protect the route to Jerusalem, helping to protect convoys of vital supplies for those besieged in Jerusalem. In January 1948 he was one of a group of 35, many of them students from the Hebrew University, who were killed while trying to get vital supplies to the besieged Gush Etzion region, south of Jerusalem. In Hebrew the 35 were known as the "Lamed Heh", and their story is probably one of the best known of Israel's War of Independence. Kibbutz Netiv Halamed Heh was founded in their memory.

Over the past two years we have lost so many young men like Tuvia who's flame burnt incredibly bright but for such a brief time. We have lost botanists, rabbis and Talmudic scholars, doctors, medical students, musicians, scientists, agronomists and so many others who's contributions would have enriched the lives of everyone. May their memories be blessed and may we be able to honour their memories by continuing their life's work however we can - learning, studying, researching, doing good.