I bought a package of a dozen hyacinth bulbs late last fall. The package had lovely pictures of pink, white and blue hyacinth flowers on the cardboard labelling. Having planted them up for forcing, I have been bringing them out one by one from their cold dark box in the garage, to enjoy in these winter months. They have been wonderful, their fragrance greeting us when we come through the door overpowering the onions from last night’s supper or the dog. Trouble is they are all blue but one. Now I am not complaining and it really is not a trouble, but a curiosity. I love blue. It is my favourite colour .

I have blue eyes and I have one granddaughter with blue eyes. I am familiar with the fact that blue is a recessive colour when it comes to human eyes but blue in flowers has always seems plentiful although I learned years ago that blue was the rarest of flower colours. It made sense, blue eyes are recessive so why shouldn’t blue in flowers be rare. But blue in most flowers is not recessive, it is dominant when crossing two colours of the same plant. This is the puzzle to me that, if it is dominant why do only one in ten plants have blue flowers? While the colour blue is dominant within a species, it is not dominant throughout other species and unless species cross that cannot change. Breeders have for decades been trying to breed blue flowers such as Chrysanthemums or Roses. The blue Carnations and Chrysanthemums you see in the supermarket are artificially dyed and they just do not look real. Even the so called blue roses are really a pale violet colour and still look artificial to me. Because blue signifies sincerity there is something ironic in my opinion to artificially colour flowers blue or try to manipulate a blue rose into existence! I rather like how nature does it.

I have plenty of blue flowers in my garden because I seek them out I guess but, “Blue is a color that is infrequent in nature,” said David Lee, author of “Nature’s Palette: The Science of Plant Color” and a retired professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida International University in Miami. “Less than 10 percent of the 280,000 species of flowering plants produce blue flowers,” he said. (Treehugger April, 2020). Bees are most attracted to blue and apparently cannot see the colour red so this poses another puzzle. Why is nature not providing more blue flowers to attract those bees, which do so much heavy work pollinating our food. 

The reason apparently lies in the fact that there are no real blue pigments in nature. ( I am still puzzled a bit about indigo)The plants that have that have blue flowers manipulate the physics of light to appear blue. Too clever! The colour blue is manipulated from deep violets and purples.  

The February sun lights up my small indoor bulb collection. For the pink Hippeastrum it is its third flower stem. It has been blooming continuously since January 1st. This is ‘Red Lion’s’ second set of blooms. Such treasures.

The physics, chemistry and brilliance of the plant world never ceases to amaze me. They are so quiet about their abilities to appear to be a colour they are not, look after each other, and the animal world.