Orchid Color

I'm mostly talking about iris, but I'm sure it may apply to other genus too.

When AIS says an iris is orchid colored, I have seen many different colors marked off in plant files. Not so much with the other colors, but orchid in particular.

So, how would you define the color orchid as relates to our list of colors to choose from?

On this same note, is there a site that defines or shows the Royal Horticultural Societies colors? Such as... violet (near RHS 86A) ...This would help in trying to figure out when something is lavender violet, or blue violet.

You can find many pictures online, but trying to figure out which are true and which aren't is the trick. Shading, the time the picture is taken, and how far along the bloom is, can make a big difference.

There isn't an RHS colour chart online as far as I'm aware, if there were, by the time your monitor and printer had interpreted the colours, they could be way off!

To date all colours shown on multi coloured blooms have tended to be listed, is this what you meant?

Thanks for the information on RHs colors. You're right about the colors not being the same on the computer. Too bad they don't have a color chart like you get for picking paint colors. :) I'd love to buy one if there was such a thing. It would help with figuring out the true colors of some of the blooms. As you pointed out, the pictures online may not be accurate either.

What I meant about orchid, is when I see AIS describe one iris as having orchid coloring, and in PF violet/lavender is marked. Then AIS may describe another iris as having orchid coloring and in PF pink is marked.

This is what brought about my question...What color is orchid?

When I think of orchid, I think lavender. But color is somewhat objective, so you may find some discrepancies. (And you may find some flat-out errors, too - if you think a color should be changed on an existing entry, please let us know.)

BTW, you can buy the RHS color chart (which is a bit like paint chips) - it's available from them for £135: http://www.rhs.org.uk/Learning/publications/pubs_library_colourchart.asp

They also have a "lite" version available for £25 ;o)

Thanks Terry. I'm going to go check out the chart. I hope it does the cost conversion for me, because the way you typed it, it looks pretty expensive. ;)

The color charts look great, but a little on the pricey side.

Yeppers. Occasionally I check eBay just to see if one comes up for sale, but I haven't had much luck yet. (I can't say I've been terribly diligent in trying, tho....)

*sheepish G* Duh, my vocab isn't working lately, sorry JoanJ, I misread orchid coloured thinking it was multi coloured and you meant it as in single colour 'orchid'. I always think of 'orchid' as a mauvy pink, still as Terry says colour is objective.

£135 translates into something like $245 and I've only ever seen one secondhand set of charts come up for sale. I contacted the seller within 10 minutes of their post but it had already gone Booooooooo Hisssssssssssssss, that was a couple of years ago. You might be more likely to find one when a catering or florist company unfortunately goes bust or sells up but they are still expensive.

I checked ebay today and there aren't any on there right now. A florist might be a good place to check. Maybe they get a discount on them.

You can see a lot of color info at http://www.azaleas.org/index.pl/azcolorsystems.html including a link to the RHS colors and Universal Color Language color names at http://www.azaleas.org/index.pl/rhsmacfan1.html

Many RHS colors have the same UCL name because there are 808 RHS colors and only 267 UCL colors.

Regards,
Bob Stelloh Hendersonville NC USDA Zone 7

Hey, that color chart is really neat. I think it will be very helpful. Thanks!

I've bookmarked the azalea site so I can go back and look it over better. The little bit I looked around, it appears to have a lot of helpful information.