Pic of the Week: 31 July 2016

by iperl © 2016

A colourful tulip farm…but where? It certainly doesn’t look like the Netherlands. The big hill in the background is a bit of a giveaway, as are the farm buildings. We’d guess it’s somewhere in North America.

Although tulips are associated with the Dutch, their natural habitat is in temperate mountain regions, notably those in Southern Europe and north-western Asia. It has spiritual significance in much of the Muslim world – the Turkish word for a tulip (lale) shares the same spelling as Allah in Arabic script. But whereas the Turks saw it as a symbol of Paradise on earth, the Dutch during their tulipomania in the 1630s saw it as reflecting the fragility and brevity of life.