How does anthocyanin make flowers colorful? Is it reflective?

Someone once counted the colors of 4 197 kinds of flowers and found that among these thousands of colors, there are mainly nine kinds: red, yellow, blue, white, purple, green, orange, tea and black. So why do flowers have different colors? It turns out that there are several magicians hiding in the petals, juggling the flowers!

There is a magician named anthocyanin. It is a very unstable pigment, and its color will change as long as the pH and temperature change slightly. When acidic, the petals are red. The stronger the acidity, the redder the flowers. When it is alkaline, the petals are blue. The stronger the alkalinity, the darker the color, even blue-black. When it is neutral, the petals appear purple. You can do a little experiment like this. Please pick a red morning glory, put it in a bowl, and then pour some alkaline water into the bowl. At this time, you will find that the red morning glory has turned blue. Put this flower in white vinegar diluted with water and it will turn red again. Now you should know why roses have red flowers, morning glory has blue flowers and crape myrtle has purple flowers!

Some flowers are yellow, orange and brown. This is another magician doing tricks. The magician is carotene, which is named because it is the most abundant pigment in carrots. If a flower takes carotene and carotenoids as the main pigments, it will appear yellow, orange or brown, such as forsythia flower, Rosa davurica, calendula and so on.

As for some flowers that are green, it is because the petals are the most abundant in chlorophyll. Where are the white flowers? It turns out that white flowers do not contain any pigment, just because the tissue of cells is covered with countless small bubbles. Please find a white flower and squeeze it hard with your hands to squeeze out the small bubbles in the petals. You will find that the white petals become transparent.

Without the sun, flowers would not have beautiful colors. White light from the sun consists of seven colors of light: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple. Acidic anthocyanins absorb light other than red light and reflect red light back, so people see bright red. Similarly, neutral anthocyanins reflect purple light, alkaline anthocyanins reflect blue light, carotene can reflect yellow light and orange light respectively, and white flowers contain no pigment and can reflect all seven kinds of light. So, we saw these colorful flowers.

Interestingly, the flowers of some plants will change color! Cotton flowers are white when they first bloom in the morning, and soon the petals gradually turn yellow and white. After the flowers bloom, if it is sunny and sunny, it will turn pink or red. Later, the flowers became more and more red and purple, and finally the whole corolla turned grayish brown. Honeysuckle is a semi-evergreen twining shrub. When it blooms in late spring and early summer, it turns white first and then yellow. A honeysuckle tree, reflecting yellow and white, is very beautiful. There is also a plant called Sanzui Hibiscus, which turns white in the morning, light red at noon and deep red at night when it blooms. The most famous is a plant called hibiscus mutabilis. Its flowers are white at first, slightly red the next day and yellow the third day.