Today, continuing my research, I want to find out how, food coloring changes the color of a flower, and if it can be done on a living plant, not just a cut flower. I'm sure most of us did this experiment as children and thought it was cool, or magic. basically: AWESOME!
The basics of it are plants take water into themselves through their veins. Adding color to the water in CUT flowers helps bring the dye up through the stem an into the flower. Light colored flowers tend to take on the color that was added to the water. But can this be done with the whole plant, not just the cuttings?
Just like a cut flower, a plant takes water up through its roots. According to a study done at Bishop Dwenger High School in 2007, potted plants that were watered with colored water took on attributes from the dye in their leaves and stems. Plants that were given dark colored dyes such as blue or black showed more color in their leaves. According to the same study the plants that were treated with red dye slowed the growth or killed the plant.
So, I'm a little concerned that by trying this I may kill the plants...I DID buy them on deep mark down, though, for this purpose, so I guess I'll do it! Honestly all the info above came from ehow or about.com web posts...Not the MOST educational things out there. But its about all I found by googling (is googling a real word yet?) "food coloring to change flower color" and most posts concerned cut flowers not the whole plant.
Today I will leave you with a few pictures of MY orchids. My next post, I guess, I will start the process with my experiment. Tomorrow, Re-potting plants purchased at the store...the way I do it. :)
Yellow flower is a close up of my Oncidium Orchid.
Peach, pink, yellow/pink & B&W flowes are all Plalaenopsis Orchids.
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