The beautiful blue chrysanthemums... aren't they lovely?

It is now no longer a problem for anybody (especially florists) to obtain fresh flowers of any colour they wished for. There is now a technique of dyeing white flowers to other colours; be it pink, blue, black, green or purple.

I remember conducting an experiment when I was in Primary 1. We placed white flowers into a beaker of diluted red food colouring. After a while, the flowers had tints of red on the tips of their petals. Later, we saw that almost the whole flowers had turned red. We then cut the stalks of the flowers and found out that they were red too. We even ‘created’ a mixed-coloured flowers by dividing  the stems and place them in separate jars of dye.

Last Sunday, I came home from Kak Tasneem’s kenduri (click here to learn more about kenduri’ and click here to read about Kak Tasneem’s kenduri) with a bouquet of blue chrysanthemum for Nenek (my grandmother). I showed the flowers to nenek and she stared at them in wonder. She was really amazed by the flowers! She told me that she had never seen blue chrysanthemums before.

Blue chrysanthemums in a vase

Anyway we later found out that the chrysanthemums were actually dyed! As soon as we reached home, I arranged the flowers in a transparent vase and to my surprise, the water turned into a faint shade of blue after 5 minutes. Then, the eczema on my hands became very itchy and rashes appeared as I am allergic to some chemicals like artificial colourings. After replacing the water for four times within 41 hours, the colour of the chrysanthemums are no longer a striking blue but had toned down into a softer shade. Nevertheless, the water were still blue everytime I changed it.

The water is blue although I had changed it about 5 times when the photo was snapped

It is amazing how we can ‘colour’ our flowers into any colours of our choice. It would definitely  be a fun project for kids to enjoy.

Note: All of the flowers in these photos had their colours toned down to a softer blue. Click here to see the original colours of the flowers.