Blue roses are perhaps the most unusual flowers to be found in flower shops. The unusual color of the buds, although it is artificial, nevertheless causes genuine delight in the one to whom such a bouquet was presented.
For the first time, the mention of blue roses was found in a poem by Kipling. It tells about a guy in love, whose girlfriend demanded, as a sign of his feelings, to give her a bouquet of blue roses. The poor young man had to spend many years of his life in search, but he never managed to find a single blue flower.
Are there varieties of blue roses
Nowadays, it is not uncommon to find blue rose seedlings in various gardening catalogs, but many gardeners will be annoyed by the lack of the desired result. In fact, varieties of blue roses do not exist in nature. Many geneticists and breeders have been looking for a way to grow a blue or blue rose for more than a dozen years, but as a result they have failed. The thing is that there is no blue pigment in the rose - delphinidin. The only way to get blue roses is to simply dye them. For example, in Holland they learned how to color roses in the process of growing them. To do this, flowers are grown not in the ground, but in a hydroponic installation, during the growth process, treating the roots of the plant with fertilizer abundantly containing a coloring pigment. In our area, blue roses are not yet grown, they are dyed after cutting.
How Roses Really Make Blue
You don't need to make much effort to get a bouquet of blue roses. To paint flowers, you will need white roses, a bucket, 0.7 liters of water and blue ink.
- Blue ink is added to the bucket of water. The finished solution should be one tone darker than the desired color of roses;
- You will need to remove the maximum number of leaves from the rose. This is done to prevent the leaves from acquiring a blue tint and for a more intense coloring of the bud.
- For faster staining, it is recommended to make a one-centimeter oblique cut at the base of the stem.
- After preparation, the roses are placed in a bucket, while it is important to ensure that the stems do not fall below three centimeters into the coloring solution.
After about 15 hours, the buds will turn blue. Such roses are stored for a long time and do not lose their aroma after staining.
There is an alternative way to get blue roses at home. To do this, white rose buds are simply painted with blue spray paint. The appearance of the flower after processing is amazing, but this method is not popular because such a rose will not last more than two days. Also, the bud loses its aroma and acquires the smell of paint.
