Settle Wildflowers - Day 87 - Orange 5 - Understanding Eye-popping Plant Pigments

How many orange wild flowers do you know? 

Autumn leaves yes

 - Norway Maples can be orange-red-almost crimson. Sycamore is just slightly pale orange.

But flowers? 

The only bright orange flowers I found earlier in the year are 

Welsh Poppies, Fox and Cubs; That's all.

Even Scarlet flowers such as Poppies and Scarlet Pimpernel seem to have black/blue in the centre, to attract insects

Most insects
see blue and ultraviolet.
They cannot see red,
(apart from a few butterflies (monarch butterflies) and hummingbirds which can see red) - neither of these live in the UK!

Compared to blue, orange is an extreme form of red.

So now in October I am resigned to having no orange flowers this time round in my ROYGBIV circuit.

I wonder whether I should to look for  Broad-leaved Dock fruit (Rumex obtusifolius) to photograph. Its fruit are reddish for a little while before they go brown.

I notice that leaves of many wild flowers are turning red this week. Bright red, as opposed just to the pale orange. that is due to yellow and orange pigments in leaves (carotenes -see below)  that are left when green chlorophyll breaks down.

The red colour in leaves (I learn from the internet) is due to anthocyanin pigments 

These get produced by plants and leaves in positions of high light intensity and the anthocyanins protect the leaves from excessive sunlight.

Carotene pigments (which are carotenoids) produce yellow, orange and red colors whereas anthocyanin pigments (which are flavonoids) produce red, purple, magenta and blue colours.

Blue cornflowers have the same pigments as red roses, but the pigments in the cornflower petals are bound to other pigments and metal ions, making cornflowers look blue.

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On the morning of 4 Oct it rains. Then the sun comes out - so the first hint of orange colours in the leaves are vibrant. I walk to Langcliffe Hoffman Kin - actually to the area of the old offices that have been neglected about 30 years. To search for red leaves, including red leaves of Geranium lucidum (Yet another small pink Geranium that I have not featured yet, though it has been out all summer)

I wander through the yard - the limestone gravel and soil base now getting colonised by vegetation. I record 34 species of plant in flower. Half way through I look up and am dazzled by a very orange patch of Montbretia - Crocosmia, - Good article here   a hybrid of two South American species.

Shining Crane's-bill - Geranium lucidum

Shining Crane's-bill - Geranium lucidum - growing in the shade - the leaves are green and there are a few flowers still out)

Green Alkanet - still in flower - and demonstrating that insects like blue flowers

I wander through the yard - the limestone gravel and soil base now getting colonised by vegetation. I record 34 species of plant in flower. Half way through I look up and am dazzled by a very orange patch of Montbretia - Crocosmia, - Good article here   a hybrid of two South American species.


Then I see the Montbretia:-

https://bugwomanlondon.com/2017/08/09/wednesday-weed-montbretia/

Guess what pollinates Montbretia - Humming Birds!

penultimately a Blackberry flower - definitely five leaflets in the leaves of this plant. The leaves I found near here earlier in the year were Dewberries with three leaflets.

Just beyond the bramble was some honeysuckle - Yes that is orangish too.

In this country it attract night flying moths with its strong scent. 

Only moths with a long proboscis can reach down the long tubular flowers.

In America hummingbirds pollinate Honeysuckle.

Honeysuckle - Lonicera 4 Sept but still out on 4 Oct

Honeysuckle climbing upwards - 4 Sept -but still out. on 4 Oct

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