Pakistan Gardening Forum

Aoa I have collected different shades of bougainvillea in Islamabad. In the current season one of the pinkish /lilac flower changed the flower color to orangy red. Can anyone help in explaining Pl.

Very interesting question but most likely extremely complex answer. I wish we knew the answer. Some flowers change color due to soil pH. Sometimes, the presence of aluminum can make drastic changes. Sometimes, it is a genetic mutation. I will ask a botanist friend.

Many thanks Farooq. I look forward to your valuable comments.

Does Your Bougainvillea's color look like this? Sent from my SM-N920I using Tapatalk

This link will be very interesting to you:
http://www.idtdna.com/pages/decoded/dec ... r-everyone

Basically, it seems that if we modify the "internal" cell pH of flower cells, the flower color will be different. This has little to do with our soil pH. Perhaps the same thing is happening with your Bougainvilleas that the flower cells (or the cells which make flower pigments) have a slightly different pH in different seasons. As a result, the pigment appear to be slightly different. The simplest experiment that I did was with our red Hibiscus flower for my school project (two decades ago :-)). If we add little bit of acid to Hibiscus flower extract boiled in water, the color would instantly change from to very light pink. Now add little bit of base, the Hibiscus extract becomes deep green.

Another fact is that, plant pigments are never a single pigment. Take the example of green leaves. To a layman, it is one green color. However, the leaf coloring is made up of several pigments in the plants. Some pigments are yellow, some are light green, some are deep green. As the season changes, the plants stop making the green pigment, and only the yellow one dominates - hence the yellow color of the leaves.

A very nice example is discussed in that link- if a certain Petunia is fed with a small amount of alcohol along with water, the white flowers turn purple!

Raja sb: sorry for the delayed response. Unfortunately all the flowers have totally disappeared and only leaves there hence I cannot share any pix to show the color. No it does match the one you have shown. Also my bougaina plant have lost all blossoms and have now developed thick leaves with thorns. Frustrating and worrisome for me.
Farooq sb: thanks for the article. A good read.

The arrival of spring brought relief to my plant. See the blossoms .