February 14th means love is in the air! The smell of roses, the taste of chocolate, the bubbly feel of wine on the palate. 250 million roses will be produced for this years’ Valentine’s Day. 73% of those will be red. Do you know why red is the most popular color? Continue reading to learn about the colors of your rose – from the deep spiritual meaning of the color to the evaluation of it’s color using our new StellarRAD+Color handheld Spectrometer with colorimetry upgrade.
The meaning of Rose Colors – Analyzing the Color of Love
Are you planning to give, or perhaps get, roses on this Valentine’s Day? Each rose color has a specific meaning, and each rose color has a specific spectra. Convenient, right? So let’s look at the spectra of love…
The color of a rose, like any other flower, is based on which color wavelengths are absorbed and which color wavelengths are reflected back. The color reflected back is the color you see. The flower must have the pigment necessary to reflect back that color. Flowers have a substance, anthocyanidin pigment, that causes the color in the flower.
Using our Handheld StellarRAD+Color we measured as many different color roses as we could. Click on the pictures below to see the RGB color swatch panel and reflectance spectrum in our new mobile spectroscopy app!
A red rose is the quintessential rose color. Of course, a red rose means Love, but it can also communicate passion and respect.
White roses communicate purity, innocence and the wonders of young love.
Roses in the deepest shades of pink express gratitude and appreciation; very similar to the gratitude we feel towards you for reading our newsletter.
Pink, the color of princesses. A light pink rose communicates grace, admiration and happiness.
Orange roses and their pink-ish relative coral, communicate desire, fascination and enthusiasm.
Purple Roses
The purple rose communicates love at first sight, enchantment, and desire and is the last naturally occurring shade of rose.
Blue Roses
Blue roses represent mystery, the impossible, or the unattainable – which makes sense, since the ability to naturally achieve a blue rose is impossible. Blue Roses do not naturally occur in blue because they lack the anthocyanidin pigment delphinidin, which is the cause of blue colors in flowers. No amount of breeding or hybridization of roses can result in a true blue rose. It’s not a matter of uncovering a recessive gene. There is no gene for blue.”
How do they make blue roses? Cut white roses are sprayed blue with floral paint or the stems are placed in blue dyed water. As the white roses absorb the blue water, the veins in the flowers turn blue first and finally the flower will take a blue color.
Black Roses
The black rose is a mysterious bloom that can convey many meanings – either death and mourning, but also renewal to new life and hope. However, like the blue rose, no flowers are truly black, including roses, because no flower absorbs all the light waves so nothing is reflected back. The flower would have to have the pigments for red, blue and green for the rose to be black.
February Customer Publication Spotlights
From sparkling wine to delectable chocolate, our customers have been using spectroscopy to control and assure quality. Here are applications where spectrometers have been used to assess the quality of these fine sentiments of love…
Chocolate Quality Assessment Based on Chemical Fingerprinting Using Near Infra-red and Machine Learning Modeling
Sensory evaluation of the chocolate is highly influenced by the quality of chocolate. Normally, consumer panels are used to determine the sensory properties of chocolate, but here spectroscopic methods have been developed that are more accurate and lower cost than consumer panels. Using near-infrared spectroscopy and machine learning, researchers in Australia and New Zealand developed models to predict the physicochemical parameters and sensory descriptors of chocolate. The models are highly accurate, and may one day replace human quality assurance.
Read Publication
Genetic Mapping Reveals an Anthocyanin Biosynthesis Pathway Gene Potentially Influencing Evolutionary Divergence between Two Subspecies of Scarlet Gilia
Remember when we told you that blue roses don’t occur in nature because they lack the anthocyanidin pigment delphinidin, which is responsible for the blue pigments in flowers. Experts postulate that
immense floral trait variation has likely arisen as an adaptation to attract pollinators. The observation of these trait syndromes suggests that pollinators use floral cues to signal the underlying nectar reward, and that complex trait combinations may persist and evolve through genetic correlations.We found that natural selection acts on several floral traits, and that hummingbirds and hawkmoths exhibited flower color preferences as predicted by their respective pollinator syndromes.
Flower color showed strong association with the anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway gene, dihydroflavonol-4-reductase (DFR). Together, our findings suggest that hummingbirds and hawkmoths exhibit contrasting flower color preferences, which may drive the divergence of several floral traits through correlated trait evolution. Read Publication
Impact of post-bottling storage conditions on color and sensory profile of a rosé sparkling wine
High quality sparkling wine is a labor-intensive process. Rosé sparkling wines are no exception – post-bottling storage is a critical phase for rosé sparkling wines because they are photosensitive and suffer from degradation over time, resulting in color and aroma changes. Researchers have used spectroscopy to evaluate the impact of different storage conditions on the sensory profile and color of the post-storage wine.
This study evaluated the effect of post-bottling storage conditions on the chromatic characteristics and sensory profile of a rosé sparkling wine, stored in Antique Green glass bottle for 9 months following the disgorgement. Samples were stored at 30 °C in the dark (D30), at 5 °C in the dark (D5) and at 5 °C under UV irradiation (UV5). At the end of post-bottling storage, a considerable variation in colour intensity (CI) and hue (H) was revealed in comparison to the initial values. In UV5 an important reduction of CI (−22%) and a remarkable increase of H (+46%) was revealed, whereas in D30 sparkling wine both CI (+16%) and H (+33%) increased. The sample under the suitable storage conditions (D5) exhibited only a slight increase of CI (+4%) and H (+9%). After 9-months, the sensory profile of D30 was characterized by burnt notes, although UV5 received the worst judgment due to the presence of olfactory defects (wet wool, foxy and meaty character) deriving from photo degradation processes. Read Publication
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
