Rangoli, also known as kolam or Muggu, is a folk art from India in which patterns are created on the floor in living rooms or courtyards using materials such as colored rice, dry flour, colored sand or flower petals. It is usually made during Diwali, Onam, Pongal and other Indian festivals. They are meant to be sacred welcoming areas for the Hindu deities. The ancient symbols have been passed down through the ages, from each generation to the next, keeping both the art form and the tradition alive. Similar practices are followed in different Indian states: in Tamil Nadu, there is Kolam in Tamil Nadu; Mandana in Rajasthan; Chaookpurna in Chhattisgarh; Alpana in West Bengal; Aripana in Bihar; Chowk pujan in Uttar Pradesh; Muggu in Andhra Pradesh and others.

Photographer Gregg Segal travelled the world to document children and the food they eat in a week. Partly inspired by the increasing problems of childhood obesity, he tracked traditional regional diets as yet unaffected by globalisation, and ironically, found that the healthiest diets were often eaten by the least well off. (Photo by Gregg Segal/The Guardian)

“The titan arum or Amorphophallus titanum (from Ancient Greek amorphos, “without form, misshapen” + phallos, “phallus”, and titan, “giant”) is a flowering plant with the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world. The titan arum's inflorescence is not as large as that of the Talipot palm, Corypha umbraculifera, but the inflorescence of the Talipot palm is branched rather than unbranched”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Kew Gardens employee Lauren Bird Royal examines the flowering of the Titan Arum lily at the Botanical Gardens at Kew on September 30, 2005 in London, England. For the first time in horticultural history, the Titan Arum lily can be seen at all three active stages in its lifecycle – in flower, fruit and leaf.The flowering corm is nearly three metres tall and weighs 91kg and is very rarely seen outside of the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

This photographer has made it her mission to change people’s perception of pigeons – focusing on some of the most beautiful of the more than 300 species found globally. Rather than focus on the gray, nondescript birds people usually associate with the term “pigeon”, Leila Jeffreys has instead decided to snap the more vibrant varieties. Whether it be the wompoo pigeon, with its deep purple breast and green wings, or the rose-crowned fruit dove, with its pink head, Jeffreys, 46, gives the birds the same attention she would give a human model. (Photo by Leila Jefferies/Caters News Agency)

The valley of La Geria, which has been declared a 'Protected Area', is Lanzarote’s main wine-growing region, occupying about 20 square miles (52 square kilometres) and stretching on both sides of the road from Masdache to Uga and right up to the volcanic slopes. This area produces most of Lanzarote’s excellent wines, of which 75 per cent are made from the Malvasía grape, one of the oldest known grape varieties. Best known as a honey-coloured, very sweet wine with a rich flavour, already praised by Shakespeare hundreds of years ago, today the Malvasía grape produces a wide variety of quality white, red or rosé wines, from very sweet to very dry.

“Yucca is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the agave family, Agavaceae. Its 40-50 species are notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitish flowers. They are native to the hot and dry (arid) parts of North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Early reports of the species were confused with the cassava (Manihot esculenta). Consequently, Linnaeus mistakenly derived the generic name from the Carib word for the latter, yuca. It is also colloquially known in the midwest United States as “Ghosts in the graveyard”, as it is commonly found growing in rural graveyards and when in bloom the flowers appear as an apparition floating.” – Wikipedia

Photo: A yucca standing among flowers bursts forth a very large stalk of flowers as a heavy wildflower bloom on June 21, 2005 in the Angeles National Forest northwest of La Canada, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

An aerial view of the Atibainha dam, part of the Cantareira reservoir, during a drought in Nazare Paulista, Sao Paulo state November 18, 2014. Brazil's worst drought in 80 years has left the Cantareira system, that provides greater Sao Paulo with most of its water, with the lowest water level on record, with daily rationing becoming common in the region's smaller cities, according to the state authorities and the two main reservoirs serving metropolitan Sao Paulo, South America's largest city, could dry out by February if relief does not arrive in the upcoming rainy season. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.