Plants_From Bulbs to Beauties_article
Ангелина Скалова FROM BULBS TO BEAUTIES
Find out more about tulips...
Did you know that there are nearly 4,000 kinds of tulips? These flowers come in almost every color. There are white tulips and yellow tulips, red tulips and pink tulips, orange tulips and purple tulips. You can even find black tulips and brown tulips!
Tulips are cousins of the lilies. They grow from bulbs that are planted in the ground. The bulbs are thick buds. They are like tightly packed bags that hold all the things a plant needs to keep it alive during the cold winter months.
The inside of a bulb has layer upon layer of thick moist padding surrounding a small tough stem. When the sun is just warm enough and the ground is just wet enough, this stem starts to press its way up through the top of the bulb and out of the ground. While the flowering tulip waves in the breeze, the bulb below is soaking up more food and water, and new bulbs are forming. These can be collected to plant later.
The people of Turkey were probably the first to grow tulips in their gardens. The name “tulip” came from the Turkish word 'tulbend', which means “turban.” The flower’s shape was said to look like this cloth headdress.
An ambassador from Austria took tulips from Turkey to Europe for the first time, in 1551. The tulips grew very well in his city, Vienna. But the flowers grew even better in Holland. Soon the Dutch people were famous for their tulips. Today millions of people all over the world buy tulip bulbs from the Netherlands, as Holland is called today.
VOCABULARY SECTION
READING SECTION
TRUE / FALSE / NOT STATED
QUEST FOR THE WORDS FROM THE TEXT
1. Tulips are the most diverse flower species in the world.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT STATED
2. Tulip bulbs require warm temperatures to begin growing.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT STATED
3. Tulips originally grew wild in Austria.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT STATED
4. The word "tulip" comes from a Turkish word that describes the flower's appearance.
PHONETIC SECTION
BULBS
|bʌlbz|
THE NETHERLANDS
|ˈneðələndz|
5. Holland remains the primary source of tulip bulbs for the global market.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT STATED
SOAK
|səʊk|
TURBAN
|ˈtɜːb(ə)n|
TRUE
FALSE
NOT STATED
Vienna
|vɪˈenə|
HEADDRESS
|ˈheddres|
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