The flag

Flag

A flag is a piece of fabric with a distinctive design that is usually rectangular and used as a symbol, as a signaling device, or decoration. The term flag is also used to refer to the graphic design employed by a flag, or to its depiction in another medium.The first flags were used to assist...

 of Flevoland

Flevoland

Flevoland is a province of the Netherlands. Located in the centre of the country, at the location of the former Zuiderzee, the province was established on January 1, 1986; the twelfth province of the country, with Lelystad as its capital...

was adopted on January 9, 1986.

Description

The flag is tierced in fess

Fess

In heraldry, a fess or fesse is a charge on a coat of arms that takes the form of a band running horizontally across the centre of the shield. Writers disagree in how much of the shield's surface is to be covered by a fess or other ordinary, ranging from one-fifth to one-third...

 azure

Azure

In heraldry, azure is the tincture with the colour blue, and belongs to the class of tinctures called "colours". In engraving, it is sometimes depicted as a region of horizontal lines or else marked with either az. or b. as an abbreviation....

, or and vert.

The flag recalls how the new province was reclaimed from the IJsselmeer

IJsselmeer

IJsselmeer is a shallow artificial lake of 1100 km² in the central Netherlands bordering the provinces of Flevoland, North Holland and Friesland, with an average depth of 5 to 6 m. The IJsselmeer is the largest lake in Western Europe....

. The central yellow stripe, wavy then straight, symbolises the transformation of the sea into land. Its colour symbolises rapeseed

Rapeseed

Rapeseed , also known as rape, oilseed rape, rapa, rappi, rapaseed is a bright yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae...

 , planted to stabilise the land. The blue represents water, the green the land.

The white fleur-de-lys (lily) is a pun

Pun

The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...

. It commemorates Cornelis Lely

Cornelis Lely

Cornelis Lely was a Dutch civil engineer and statesman. He first designed and then realised by a law the Zuiderzee Works, a major project that turned the Zuiderzee into a lake, and converting a huge area into dry land.-Career outline:From 1886 to 1891, Lely led the technical research team that...

, designer of the original polder

Polder

A polder is a low-lying tract of land enclosed by embankments known as dikes, that forms an artificial hydrological entity, meaning it has no connection with outside water other than through manually-operated devices...

s, essential to the province. The flag of Lelystad, the provincial capital, is decorated with the same flower.