Thursday Challenge: Gundelia
August 13th, 2008 by Leora
Photo was taken in early summer in the Galil, in northern Israel. I believe this is a dried-out gundelia, in Hebrew a “galgal” and in Arabic called an “akoub”.
The theme for this week in Thursday Challenge is OUTDOORS (Park, Garden, Campground, Beach, Forest, Backyard,…).
Good colours. It really looks extremely dry!
Make me miss Aretz. Go ahead.
I like the colors and also the angle.
Great stitchy feeling to this pic! Makes me think of all the reasons why I hate strolls in dry, bushy areas…
Beautiful picture ! this dried flower against the blue sky !
The little tents you saw on my blog were in front of the house I was in at my summer school and the students could go in there for a shower of course.
I don’t know what it is, but it sure looks sticky! And dry!
Silly Thirsday? What a wonderful idea!
That is some kind of a thistle I think?
Jientje, here’s the Wikipedia entry…says “thistle-like”:
The gundelia is a spiny, thistle-like flowering plant of the genus Gundelia L. in the sunflower family (Asteraceae).
They occur in the semi-desert areas of Armenia, Anatolia, Israel, Iraq and Iran.
A member of this genus, tumbleweed G. tournefortii came under the spotlights in 1998, when its pollen grains were found in abundance on the Shroud of Turin. This fact served a claim in establishing the provenance of the shroud. It has been suggested that this spiny plant may be the “crown of thorns”, symbol of humiliation of Jesus. More likely it was Christ’s thorn jujube (Zizyphus spina-christi) or maybe both.
TherapyDoc, I have connections in Northern Israel in the mental health profession, if you’re interested. Only problem is you’d get about 5% your current salary…but we can’t have everything.
Yes, to everyone who says dry, Israel is very dry in the summer. I gather this galgal-akouba plant flowers in early spring.
what an unusual looking plant.
Gundelia- I think that I’ll use that as a name for my next child.
Jack, you must have read this post:
http://www.womanhonorthyself.com/?p=5127