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Project Noah Nature School
Lathyrus vernus
Spotted on Apr 27, 2013
Submitted on Apr 30, 2013
5 Comments
Tnx for this info, so this is like berries ex. if you would made a tea of dried blueberries or blackberries it goes from blue to red immediately when lemon is added ;) I was just reading about anthocyanins on wiki, didn't know they are actually UV protectors "anthocyanins have been shown to act as a "sunscreen", protecting cells from high-light damage by absorbing blue-green and ultraviolet light, thereby protecting the tissues from photoinhibition, or high-light stress. This has been shown to occur in red juvenile leaves, autumn leaves, and broad-leaf evergreen leaves that turn red during the winter. The red coloration of leaves has been proposed to possibly camouflage leaves from herbivores blind to red wavelengths, or signal unpalatability, since anthocyanin synthesis often coincides with synthesis of unpalatable phenolic compounds" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spectr... Pretty cool :))) I thought is just about vis, while is UV included ;)
The scheme of the changing is quite clear. The pigments which makes the red/magenta/purple/blue color are anthocyanins. They are pH sensitive, and their protonated forms are with one color (red), when the vacuolar solution is acid and the non-protonated forms are with other (blue) when the vacuolar solution is a base. It is more interesting for me to know why is this happening and where those protons go.
Yeah, definitely belongs to my category of non-boring flowering plants, I love when they change colors, oh it would be so nice to be able to analyze what is the molecular background for this, they are always good potential indicators for some chemical changes! Ok, I left a really really geeky comment again ;) sorry
Truly they had very beautiful color. :) I like it much because of the whole color-changing thing, very dramatic. :)
Older flowers are even nicer (I am an incorrigible blue lover)