Monday, February 13, 2017

Roses are red. Violets are blue. What gives flowers those eye-catching hues?

02/13/2017 12:00 AM EST

Knock-your-eyes-out red: A flowering plant native to Mexico called early jessamine or red cestrum.

To solve the mystery of why roses are red and violets are blue, scientists are peering into the genes of plant petals.

"When you ask anyone how one flower is different from another, for most of us, color is the feature that first comes to mind," says evolutionary biologist Stacey Smith of the University of Colorado Boulder.

Most people don't think about why a flower is a particular color, but it's an important question for biologists, says Prosanta Chakrabarty, a program ...

More at https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=191052&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click


This is an NSF News and Discoveries item.

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