![]() WHEN PURPLE LOOKS BLUEĮven then, some of us may still see purple as blue. (Think blue hydrangeas, which are produced by adding acid to the soil.) Finding a true blue flower is really hard indeed. In fact, just the tiniest tweak of metal ions in the soil can result in the same plant producing entirely different shades of blue. However, anthocyanins change their color depending on soil pH. The most common of these pigments are called anthocyanins. Instead, like artists, they must mix naturally-occurring pigments to achieve their blue hue. It turns out that plants aren’t born blue. In fact, of all the 280,000 known species of flowering plants, only 10 percent are blue. ![]() Though blue is a prominent color on earth, it is rarely produced in nature. Still, the color chart doesn’t explain why a true, pure blue remains so elusive. Over the decades, it has become the primary means by which growers and horticulturalists communicate about colors around the world. The RHS Colour Chart, created in 1966, contains 920 pigments that can be matched precisely to flowers, fruits and other plants. Do all of these colors merit the name blue?Īt the moment, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is the go-to authority. Some blues tend towards green, while others tend towards violet. On the visible color spectrum, it is located between green and violet. So why is blue so rare in the plant world? For starters, I’ll ask you to refer to the color wheel below.īlue is a primary color. His research not only produced a great list of blue flowers, but also shed some (hint) light on the issue. To find out why, I signed up for an on-line lecture given by Brandon George, a grad student working at Cornell Botanic Gardens. It all has to do with what each of us sees as blue. Or, to put it another way, it is rarely perceived in nature. Elusive and rare, it is seldom found in nature. For centuries, people have searched for a true blue flower.
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