Why Does the Morning Glory Change Color? Latest Explanation of the Reason
The morning glory is an annual twining herbaceous flowering plant of the genus Ipomoea in the family Convolvulaceae, native to tropical America and widely cultivated throughout China. It can be used for shade in small courtyards and in front of room windows, for beautifying small trellises and hedges, and can also be planted as ground cover. What is rather interesting is that the color of the morning glory changes, so let us take a look below at why the morning glory changes color!
What colors do morning glories come in?
The morning glory has slender trailing stems and axillary cymes of 1 to several flowers, with peduncles of varying lengths, filaments pubescent at the base, and trumpet-shaped corollas. The flower colors are bright and beautiful, with the common colors being white, red, pink, blue, purple and so on. The color is related to genetic genes, and for the same variety, different light, temperature and moisture will also affect the flower color.
When does the morning glory bloom?
The flowering period of the morning glory is from June to October. It usually begins to bloom slowly at 4 to 5 o'clock in the early morning, and by about noon the flowers have withered. This is because the flowers of the morning glory are large and thin and contain abundant moisture; when the sun shines on them, the moisture in the flowers evaporates completely within a relatively short time. In a cool, shaded place the morning glory wilts more slowly, and sometimes the flowers are even still open in the afternoon.
Why does the morning glory change color?
The morning glory often changes color: a purple morning glory sometimes turns blue and sometimes turns red. The color change is caused by a gene that leads to a change in the pH of the cell vacuole. According to a report in the British journal Nature, the color of morning glory flowers is not only related to the pigments and metal ions contained in the cells, but is also affected by the pH of the liquid within the cell vacuole. The vacuole is a vesicular structure in the cytoplasm, wrapped by the tonoplast and containing watery cell sap, which contains components such as salts and sugars. Scientists selected a morning glory that was still purple after blooming and compared it with a blue morning glory. They found that after blooming, the vacuole of the purple flower remained neutral in pH, while the vacuole of the blue flower became alkaline, causing the flower color to change from purple to blue, just as litmus paper turns blue when it meets an alkaline solution.