Tulips in Farmstead World — crop in the game, and what it is on a real farm.
The tulip is a spring bulb in the lily family, native to the mountains of Central Asia and made famous by Ottoman gardens and the Dutch tulip trade.
Bulbs need a cold winter before they bloom, and growers cut the stems in bud, since an open tulip bruises and fades quickly.
A short history
Tulips are native to the mountains of Central Asia and were cultivated by the Ottomans before reaching Europe in the sixteenth century. In the Netherlands they became a speculative craze in the 1630s, and the country is still the largest tulip grower in the world.
How it is grown
Tulips grow from bulbs planted in autumn, which must go through a cold winter before they flower in spring. Growers lift and replant bulbs on a schedule, and the flowers are cut in bud while the color shows, because an open tulip bruises and fades quickly.
Processing and uses
Tulips are sold by the bunch as cut flowers and by the bulb for gardens. Cut tulips keep growing in the vase, bending toward light, and they last about a week.
Pumpkin vines carry separate male and female flowers and rely on bees to pollinate them — the USDA recommends one honeybee hive per acre of pumpkins. (en.wikipedia.org)
Young sunflower buds track the sun from east to west across the sky each day, then swing back east overnight — but mature flower heads stop moving and face east for good. (en.wikipedia.org)
A young sunflower's sun-following runs on an internal circadian clock and continues even on cloudy days when the sun never appears. (en.wikipedia.org)
Facing east at dawn warms a mature sunflower head quickly, which attracts more pollinating insects. (en.wikipedia.org)
A sunflower 'flower' is actually a head of hundreds of tiny florets — each yellow 'petal' around the edge is its own small, sterile ray flower. (en.wikipedia.org)
Sunflower seeds spiral in intersecting curves of 34 and 55 — neighboring Fibonacci numbers — and a very large head can show 89 and 144. (en.wikipedia.org)