Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1883 — Changing the Color in Flowers. [ARTICLE]

Changing the Color in Flowers.

1. Our knowledge of the chemistry of vegetable pigments is not yet sufficiently advanced, for which reason the effect of artificial influence upon the color--tone of flowers has not yet received its merited attention. According to my view, tannin is an important factor in the generation of vegetable colors; it is found in almost every plant, the petals not excepted, and by the action of the most varying reagents —alkalies, earths, metallic" salts, etc. —it assumes the most manifold hues from pale rose to deep black. A darker color, therefore, is produced in flowers rich in tannin, when manured with iron salts, since, as everybody knows, tannin and iron-salts dye black, and produce ink. A practical use has been made of this, feet in -the raising of' hortensias and dahlias. The former, which in ordinary soil blossomed pale-red, became sky-blue when transplanted into Boil heavily manured with iron ochre, or when occasionally watered with a dilute alum solution. English gardeners succeeded in growing black dahlias by similar manipulations. It is well known to every florist that a change of location, that "is, a change of light, temperature, and soil (replanting,) occasionally produces new oolora, whence it may be

deduced that an interrupted nutrition of the flower may, under circumstances, effect a- change of color. Wo see no valid reason why the well-authentictfted fact of the change of color produced by manuring with iron oxide, thereby changing the nutrition of the plant, should not be practically employed by the hot-house gardener. Another very singular and successful experiment, in producing a change of color in a bird, has recently been made. A breeder of canary-birds conceived the idea of feeding a young bird with a mixture of steeped bread and finely pulverized red Cayenne pepper. Without injuring the bird, the pigment ,of the spice passed into the blood, and dyed the plumage deep red. The celebrated ornithologist Russ believes that the color of the plumage of birds might be altered according to desire, by using appropriate reagents.-Popular Science Monthly. *