Botanical specimens from the Holy Land: Relic or fraud?

[Holy Land] / [Botany] / [Relics]. Posées sur le St. Sépulcre. Fleurs de St. Jean du Désert. 
[With:] Posées sur le St. Sépulcre. Fleurs de Jérusalem. 
[With:] Fleurs de Bethléem. [Christ Child in manger]. 
[With:] Posées sur le St. Sépulcre. Fleurs de Bethanie. 
[With:] Posées sur le St. Sépulcre. Fleurs de Champs des Pasteurs. 
[With:] Posées sur le St. Sépulcre. Fleurs de Jérusalem. [Christ on Cross].
[With:] Fleurs de Gethsémani. [Christ on Cross]. 
S.l. [France or Palestine?]: s.n., s.a. [second half of 19th century?]. [Each approx. 18 x 12 cm], [7] cards to which are affixed dried botanical specimens, three cards include die-cut lithographic devotional images. Small losses to some of the specimens, a few worm holes, remnants of mounting on versos, minor toning to cards.
 
Group of 7 nineteenth-century French devotional cards displaying artful arrangements of botanical specimens purportedly picked in the Holy Land and in some cases said to have been placed on the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. I will leave it to the botanist to determine if the flowers affixed to these cards are in fact native to the Holy Land or if the project should be considered a fraud meant to dupe the faithful.
 
Each card is titled in manuscript in a neat French hand. Two of the cards include cut-out lithograph images of Christ on the Cross and one includes a cut-out image of the Crist Child in his manger. These elements would seem to date to the second half of the nineteenth century. Botanical specimens are labeled as being from the Monastery of Saint John in the Wilderness, Bethlehem, Bethany, Gethsemane, The Shepherd’s Field (in present-day Beit Sahour, in the West Bank), or simply from Jerusalem. 
 
Five of the seven specimens are labeled as having touched the Holy Sepulcher (“Posées sur le St. Sépulcre”), which would qualify them as ‘touch relics’ (also called a ‘contact’ or ‘secondary’ relic), i.e., an item that contacted or was in the vicinity of a saint’s primary relic (e.g., a body part or personal item) or another holy item. The touch relic carries with it some of the efficacious ‘charge’ of the original holy item/person/place.
 
In 1901 Hermann Kunde reported that Palestine exported large quantities of dried flowers to Europe to be used, among other things, for the purpose seen here, but he could not confirm that such flowers had indeed touched the Holy Sepulcher (see his “Palästina im Schmuck seiner Flora”). Industrially produced cards with printed lettering are known from the early twentieth century (see, e.g., A. Biase, pp. 232-22).
 
 
*Hermann Kunde, “Palästina im Schmuck seiner Flora,” Leipziger Zeitung, no. 25 (28 February 1901); A. di Biase, et al., Santi e santini: Iconografia popolare sacra europea dal sedicesimo al ventesimo secolo, pp. 232-33.