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FLOWER COLOURS AND THEIR FREQUENCY
Author(s) -
WEEVERS TH.
Publication year - 1952
Publication title -
acta botanica neerlandica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.871
H-Index - 87
eISSN - 1438-8677
pISSN - 0044-5983
DOI - 10.1111/j.1438-8677.1952.tb00002.x
Subject(s) - citation , information retrieval , library science , computer science
we call white contain a kind of anthoxanthins, compounds which when solved in water absorb in the near ultraviolet only. To bees whose eyes arc insensitive to red radiation but sensitive to that in the near ultraviolet the presence or absence of such anthoxanthins must be perceptible. Haldane (2) maintains that this kind of anthoxanthins is present in all white flowers. The fact that red poppies are visited by bees is due to the presence of these compounds. Yellow or orange flowers contain carotenoids as was proved long ago by T. Tammes (16). In tomato fruits an isomere of /3-carotene, called lycopene is to be found, in yellow flowers e.d. Viola spec, different epoxides which are also insoluble in water. In flowers someFlower pigments are among the easiest recognisable chemical characteristics of plants, although it is unfortunately not possible to analyse them by sight. The former circumstance induced me to study the frequency of flower colours in a number of widely different countries. It was my intention to take into consideration as many species as possible also those from the tropics. Consequently I was not able to give biochemical or genetical surveys such as those of Rose Scott-Moncrieff (15) or of T. Wit (19) and could only take into account the colour data mentioned in the standard flora’s in question. The adoption of this method involved certain difficulties since the problem is not so simple as was formerly supposed when it was