Contrasting Flowers. Prickly Saltwort or Salsola, Kali tragus, and Mosaic Flowers, Pupput, Hammamet, Tunisia
It's easy for me to indulge in my fascination for Antiquity here, so close to the archaeological site of Pupput (see several of my previous submissions to my photo run). In the House of the Black and White (mid-third century CE) one of the pretty mosaic floors in what was once an inner chamber is decorated with flower motifs, perhaps standardised but still...
Looking carefully I thought the flowers very much like Tulips (except for the foliage). But Tulips weren't cultivated - as far as is known - in the East until around 1000 CE in the Seljuk era, long after the late Roman Empire.
Those docile flowers stand in rather a contrast to the very Prickly Saltwort (Kali tragus) in which I became entangled on one of my shoreline forays. If you want to be scratched by this Hyperbramble, go take a walk through those dunes! These thorns have less yield than most succulents I know! and they're really sharper than needles, indeed: razor-sharp.
Contrasting Flowers. Prickly Saltwort or Salsola, Kali tragus, and Mosaic Flowers, Pupput, Hammamet, Tunisia
It's easy for me to indulge in my fascination for Antiquity here, so close to the archaeological site of Pupput (see several of my previous submissions to my photo run). In the House of the Black and White (mid-third century CE) one of the pretty mosaic floors in what was once an inner chamber is decorated with flower motifs, perhaps standardised but still...
Looking carefully I thought the flowers very much like Tulips (except for the foliage). But Tulips weren't cultivated - as far as is known - in the East until around 1000 CE in the Seljuk era, long after the late Roman Empire.
Those docile flowers stand in rather a contrast to the very Prickly Saltwort (Kali tragus) in which I became entangled on one of my shoreline forays. If you want to be scratched by this Hyperbramble, go take a walk through those dunes! These thorns have less yield than most succulents I know! and they're really sharper than needles, indeed: razor-sharp.