ColorChallenge SaturdayIndigo - Iris versicolor

Did you know that the Iris versicolor is the floral symbol of Quebec?

Commonly known as the blue flag, this beautiful Iris is also the state flower of Tennessee, and one of the six identifying symbols of Kappa Pi International Art Honor Society, an honorary fraternity established at the University of Kentucky.

Coincidentally, both the flag of Quebec, and the flag of Tennessee, have the colour indigo as one of their composing elements.

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_{By Government of Quebec (Vector graphics image by Krun) (SVG based on this file) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.}

_{By (of code) cs:User:-xfi- (according to [1], [2]) [CC0, Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.}

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Quebec's flag is sometimes called the Fleurdelisé, but the name has nothing to with this post's purple iris. It is a reference to the white fleurs-de-lis seen on the flag. The origin of the fleur de lis symbol is a complicated topic on its own:

The fleur de lis is widely thought to be a stylized version of the species Iris pseudacorus, or Iris florentina. However, the lily (genus lilium, family Liliaceae) and the iris (family Iridaceae) are two different plants, phylogenetically and taxonomically unrelated.

To make things even harder to understand, the Lilium candidum (Madonna lilly) was once the floral emblem of the province, but they changed it for a northern blue flag, another one of the nicknames given to the beauty in the picture above. The switch was probably done due to the fact that the formerly utilized white coloured Lily is not native to Quebec.

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Today I (additionally) Learned that ''être fleur bleue'' (literally: being blue flower) means to be soppy, extremely sentimental; to be an hopeless romantic that naively dreams about love.

A common chicory I snapped during a trip to Quebec City.

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This was my first participation to the #ColorChallenge. I've been seeing the tag trend for the last couple of weeks, but I only found out yesterday what, I think, sparked the Steemit buzz. My guess is that the post entitled ColorChallenge: ThursdayGreen - Soft macro photos was the first of its kind. Whoever started it first, what matters is that everything you need to know about the challenge can be found in @kalemandra's post.

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Changing my Curation Strategy

On a different note, I've decided to (temporarely?) delete all of my programmed votes at @steemvoter. The reason being I want to adopt new curation habits. I'm now in the process of letting my Steem Power recharge. The fifty accounts or so which I used to vote for on a regular basis probably won't see much of a difference without my constant medium weight support. I still plan on showing my upvotes appreciation to all of these talented Steemians out there, it's just that (for the time being) it will be done in a manual manner.