Despite some dispute today over which plant Jesus intended, the mustard seed had become proverbial for small size (17:20; m. Niddah 5:2; Toharot 8:8). Although not literally the smallest of seeds, and yielding a shrub rather than a tree in the technical botanical sense in English, the mustard plant hyperbolically conveyed Jesus' point (the inconspicuous becomes mighty) better than any other. (It commonly reaches eight to ten feet around the Lake of Galilee.)