Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Blue Daffodil


I want to say right off that blue daffodil is not quite true. The daffodil in question is actually Narcissus Ice Follies and is white with a yellow cup that lightens as it matures until it matches the petals.


But it is 'Blue Week' for the day care children so we decided to take one of those daffs and do the old trick of putting it in water with dye, blue of course.

After 4 hours this is what we found...


A little closer detail...quite pretty actually!


24 hours later the edge is even more solidly dyed and the color in the xylem tubes is showing.


 The xylem are the tubes in the stem and flowers through which water is pulled by capillary action.


The result is odd but fun!

12 comments:

Gail said...

Did the little cutie pies like the experiment? I did!

Cindy, MCOK said...

How cool is that???!!!

growingagardenindavis said...

They did Gail...although some of them thought it was going to be instant...like magic :)

Kathy said...

I like that better than carnations, which is what we did it with.

Jan said...

I really like the last photo--all that blue really shows up! I used to do that with carnations too...now I'm going to have to try this on my own daffs! (and I'm not even a kid!!)

Mr. McGregor's Daughter said...

I love science! That is a very fun experiment and such a great way to teach kids. It looks really wild. I'll have to try that when my daffodils bloom.

Layanee said...

Oh, my granddaughter, Hailey, will love this little trick.

Anonymous said...

I must remember to do that with grandchildren when I get some one day. That was an interesting experiment. I hope they had fun.~~Dee

sharon said...

I have donr this with carnarions...but you should split the stem and use red, and blue and watch the results..

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Red Maple Tree said...

Wonderful experiment. The flower is looking so beautiful.

Nelson said...

Lovely flowers. On the last image seems like the blue daffodils is not made through dye. Cool experiment.