can food coloring affect flower color?

Is it possible a white flower to change color if you water the plant with colored water, without cutting off blooms?

interesting question...some shades of some flowers can change when you alter the PH...but as far as I am aware no...but at school we altered the colours of some white blooms with food colourings in vases but they had to be cut flowers not growing ones...anyone else?

I would think that the soil would filter out the color, and how intense the color was. Interesting science project though. Any junior gardeners willing to take up the challenge. If you do that would deserve and A+ : )

Hi MGman, Cant say if it would be pos, somehow dont think so as you would need a hellish amount of food colouring, but how much was'nt the question, I know Hydrangias can be altered by adding acidic mixes to the soil, so why not give it a go and put us out of our missery. I, like Chrissy, when at school cut the stem of a white carnation right down the centre, leaving complete stem about 2 inch from the flower head, then devided the two half stems into two different coloured waters dyed with blue and red in each small vase, it worked, we had one side of the flower pinky red, while the other side was bluey, so if you take all that into account, them maybe it would work, proberbly better IF it were a small plant and was in a pot, then you would have more control over the amount of coloured water the plant took up. have a go, Good luck. WeeNel.

Food coloring only affects the cut flowers. If you could give your plant an IV of food color that would work. Good luck hitting a vein.

It really is an interesting thought, but if it were true, I don't think scientists would struggle with all of the ins and outs of hybridization (did I just make that word up?) if all they had to do was add food coloring to the watering can. Do you understand what I mean? The process of photosynthasis might be like distilling. If you add food color to a jar, heat it up and collect the condensation, it always makes clear water. You can even do it with natural orange juice and still get water. So, I would think that the color molecules would be too heavy to drag up, just like consensation. This is all just theory though, I don't really know how it would effect bed flowers.

Many florists shops add food coloring to cut flowers to alter the color....orange in yellow daisies gives a flush of orange around the edges, blue in pink carnations gives a purple flush....that kind of thing. I doubt that it would work for uncut flowers though, because their own filtering system would cancel out the color....it works for cut flowers because the color is drawn up the stem directly.

doing a science project...Help!!

exex start your own thread.