386 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE COLORS OF FLOWERS. 



Bt HENRI COUPIN. 



MITCH might be said, from an artistic and poetic point of view, 

 concerning the colors of flowers. It is in the corolla that 

 they reveal themselves in their most minute delicacy. The tints 

 so widely diffused among animals, even those of butterflies, are 

 coarse as compared with them, and the painter's palette is powerless 

 to reproduce them. They run through the whole gamut of the 

 solar spectrum, even to its most minute details. Some naturalists 

 have striven to establish a classification of them, and it will be con- 

 venient to be acquainted with their efforts, though they are not 

 decisive and are somewhat artificial, like all classifications. We 

 g^ve one of the most ingenious of them: 



Green. 



Cyanic series . " 



Greenish-blue. Yellow-green 



Blue. 



Blue-violet. 

 Violet. 

 Violet- red. 



Yellow. 

 Yellow-orange. 

 Orange. 

 Orange-red. 

 Red. 



► Xanthic series. 



The tyj)e of the cyanic series is blue, and that of the xanthic 

 series yellow. The first is sometimes denominated the deoxidized 

 series, and the second the oxidized, but these designations have 

 hardly solid enough foundations to be preserved. De Candolle, who 

 publishes the table in his Vegetable Physiology, appends some in- 

 teresting remarks to it. 



It will be noticed by the inspection of the table that nearly all 

 the flowers susceptible of changes of color, as a rule, simply go up 

 or down the scale of shades of the series to which they belong. 

 Thus, in the xanthic series the flowers of the Nyctago jalapa may be 

 yellow, yellow-orange, or red; those of Rosa eglantina yellow- 

 orange or orange-red; those of nasturtium from yellow to orange; 

 the flowers of Ranunculus asiaticus present all the colors of red 

 up to green; those of the Hieracium staticefolium, and of some 

 other yellow Chicoracece and of some Leguminosce like the lotus, 

 become greenish-yellow when dried, etc. In the cyanic series the 

 flowers of many Boraginacem, especially of Lithospermum pur- 

 pureo-coeruleum, vary from blue to violet-red; those of hortensia 

 from rose to blue; the ligulate flowers of the asters from blue to 

 red or violet; those of the hyacinths from blue to red, etc. 



There are, however, a few apparent exceptions to this rule. 

 Thus, although the hyacinths usually vary only in the blues, reds, 



