Science Experiment/food coloring in daffodil blooms

 

These daffodil blooms had their stems split roughly into thirds with a sharp knife and then I just ripped the thirds apart another inch and or two to finish splitting them so that the bottom of the stems were at the bottom of the tubes. Test tubes are 5/8” diameter with just two small drops of food coloring into three different test tubes. I picked the blooms at 10 AM cut the stems and put them in tap water, went to the store and bought the food coloring and got them in the three tubes by 11 AM. Seven hours later they looked pretty good. I re-cut the stems with a really sharp knife again at 11 PM before going to bed. These photos are after 23 hours at room temperatures when I set up a display at our library for a tour group that came to Mt. Pleasant on Wednesday. I used these the night before for a Texas Master Gardening class to show how water is pulled up the stems of plants. Same as with trees it would show how water contains dissolved solids or food, nutrients and or weed killers and they will ONLY get pulled up by the roots and used on just that section of the tree that is being fed by the roots that are connected on that one side of the tree and or bush.

Notice that in the younger blooms that the very end of the stigma, at the end of the pistil has pulled coloring right where you would want to dab on some pollen! OK it appears that RED food coloring is more toxic or it plugs up the water ways in these blooms as the red sections age the fastest and or they are dying quicker. Notice that as the veins get closer to the edges of the petals that they get so small that they filter out the food coloring and NONE of the coloring is making it to the very edges of the petals and also the coloring does NOT reach the very outside edges of the trumpet or at least in these varieties it does not. (Ice Follies and a seedling Reverse Bi-color seedling from Dr. John Reed.) Pretty common to see the very edges of petals to “burn” or die first. Also makes more sense why cup rims burn and or dry up first when it gets really hot.

Yellow blooms will have the blue and green appear as the same color, you really need to use white blooms or show that blue water ends up green in a yellow bloom. REALLY cool to use Paper Whites in these as various smaller blooms are all one color. I drilled three 5/8” diameter holes with a forstner style drill bit a little close together, then reamed and widened them a little, I used a 2” thick board to keep them stable. This would REALLY be good to share with school age children, but I think the “adults” were more surprised possibly than children were.
As far as being valuable for show daffodils you could use this to test various water solutions to see if your “well water, city water supply, bottled water, distilled water, high or low PH water, ETC.” could be experimented with. Folks have mentioned adding sugar or fertilizer and or some of the commercial “waters” that are supposed to keep flowers blooming longer in a vase. Pretty easy to do one of these the night before for your local daffodil shows and use this for a public show and tell. Keith Kridler Mt. Pleasant, Texas PS you can share this if you like. KK
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3 comments for “Science Experiment/food coloring in daffodil blooms

  1. I’m enjoying these science posts which you’ve started, Keith.  Your posts, along with reading the various links about bees, have been very interesting.

    Mary Lou

  2. Thanks for writing this up and including the photos, Keith! I hope lots of people will have some fun and try this experiment. I have done this for April Fool’s at our science center and hid the test tubes holding the food coloring in a dark vase so they were not seen. I put the vase of daffs (white ones) at the front desk and waited to see who noticed that the flowers were gradually changing to different colors over the next few days. I’m going to go grab some green and blue food coloring in a bit and go pick a few flowers to try to turn green for our daffodil meeting Sunday on St. Patrick’s Day! I was searching for a photo of a daffodil died blue using this technique I thought was on Daffnet several years ago and people were suggesting names for it. I searched Daffnet, but couldn’t find it, though I did find other fun conversations when I searched for “food coloring.” Then I found the photo in my pictures folder. It was was posted by Brenda Lyons from Australia. Brenda, I hope you don’t mind me reposting that photo. My favorite name someone came up with was ‘Tidy Bowl.’  For those who don’t remember or might not have had it in your country, Tidy Bowl was a blue tinted toilet bowl cleaner. ;->

    I read that photos are not usually included in comments, but I’m going to try and if I can’t figure it out, I’ll post it separately as a new message.

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