True blue flowers

摘要

Anthocyanins are to be thanked for beautiful flower colours. These sugar-containing flavonoids differ from other plant pigments - such as green chlorophylls, yellow and orange carotenoids and purple betalains - by exhibiting a wider variety of colours. When anthocyanins are found in petals, dissolved in the petal cells' vacuoles (large sacs that make up over 90 per cent of the cells' volume), they are responsible for an assortment of reds, purples and blues.