Sunday, November 15, 2009

Where do purple flowers get their colours from?

Good question


Flower colors of red, pink, blue and purple come mainly from the pigments called anthocyanins. Anthocyanins are water soluble pigments in the class of


chemicals called flavanoids, which are phenolics. Anthocyanins are found in the


cell vacuoles and are glucosides meaning they contain a sugar molecule.





A classic experiment uses the anthocyanins in red cabbage as a pH indicator


because anthocyanins change color depending on the pH. You could do the same


thing with flower petals. An easy way is to crush a red rose petal on a white


plate with the back of a spoon and add either vinegar (acid) or baking soda


(base) and note the color change. A college lab manual has an experiment on


chromatography of flower anthocyanins (Witham et al. 1971).





Flowers may also contain another class of pigments called carotenoids, which


are responsible for red in tomato and orange in carrot root. Carotenoids are


red, yellow and orange in color. They do not reside in the vacuole but in


organelles called plastids, either in green chloroplasts or in nongreen


chromoplasts

Where do purple flowers get their colours from?
I DONT KNOW SORRY!
Reply:from biology point of view pigment anthocyanin is reponsible for it.


from physics point of view it shows this type of colour coz it reflects some part of the sun light falling on it which gives us purple colour appearence.


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