Anthocyanins are to be thanked for beautiful flower coleurs. 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.rnMany years of research have focused on the development of flower colour, particularly how blues are created. Numerous efforts have been undertaken to resolve two major mysteries: how so few anthocyanin chromophores can produce so many colours and what makes these colours, usually unstable above pH 4, survive inside living cells.
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