A question for you lily growers. (TurtleMike/Craig/Whoever)

[PondmaninAL]

Does the pH of the water affect the color of the bloom?

[Julles]

That's an interesting question.  Because, with hydrangeas, the pH of the soil DOES effect the color.

[Desertponder]

I've wondered that myself.

[turtlemike]

That is an interesting question one that I have no answer for.     All of the water on my place has a ph of approximately 8.      I would have to go up on the mountain and get some soil from the top where the mountain azaleas grow to get some acid soil around here.  but that soil would be so different in so many ways from the chalky clay that my ponds are made from I wouldn't trust that any color difference there might be would be the result of ph difference and not some other difference like sandy verses clay or high organic verses low organic like my pond clay.   My pond clay has so much chalk in it that I would have a very hard time making it very acid and then it probably wouldn't stay acid for long.    I'm thinking of a side by side comparison with two pots one with regular chalky clay for your high ph pot and low ph farmed out clay soil from the same area mixed with some alum or sulphur to lower the ph in the other pot would be the experiment to perform.    Since both come from the same parent material and both should be low in the major nutrients,    the farmed out soil because its farmed out and the chalky clay sub soil because it's subsoil might provide enough controll of the variables so that any color difference could be attributed to the ph and not some other difference.      Any fertilizer like lily tabs could be given equally.     the next question is which plant to test.     Maybe a plant that shows a tendency to color change already would be a candidate.   I'm not talking about a changeable lily like Comanche but maybe a lily like mayla or fire opal that lighten or darken depending on season would be a good candidate.  also a mex cross plant that fades in summer like Colorado maybe.  You would probably have to try several varieties to get a good idea.       Maybe I'll try that some year when I have more time.     And then there is the question of tropicals and how they would act.         I'm sure someone out there who has more experience with plants in pots of varying soil types knows much more than I do because I don't usually grow in pots and my pond soils are all similar.

[PondmaninAL]

That's an interesting question.  Because, with hydrangeas, the pH of the soil DOES effect the color.

Julles, it was the hydrangeas that made me think of it and not just recently. I've had this question in my head for a few years.

Thanks Mike. If you do perform the experiment, make sure that you post the results here and on WGI/VA's mailing list. I'm sure that there will be some there that has never thought about it. I don't have the room, lilies, or sunny spaces to perform that experiment here, yet.

[Joyce]

I think soil nutrient level has more to do with color than anything else. 
I found any lily I grow free rooted in the mud ponds is much more vibrant and rich in color (and often darker) than a lily crammed into a little pot.
The smaller the pot, the weaker/feebler the color of the bloom, in my experience.
Also, if you don't repot every year...that will definitely cause pale, infrequent blooms.

[Craig]

Based on observations and no hard evidence from a controlled experiment...and Mike, if you do decide to try what you mentioned, I'd suggest you need to find a way to keep the water pH neutral otherwise it becomes an uncontrolled parameter....I have to think that pH has no effect on flower color.

I have seen lilies in bloom from New England to Florida and Florida to the Pacific Northwest and the colors have always been true to type, but I never asked what the pH of the water was at any of the farms/nurseries/botanic gardens I visited.  Still, I have to think they encompassed a range of pH from somewhere less than 7.0 to at least the 8.6+ of south Florida water.

Personally, I have had blue/purple lilies turn pink....'Midnight' in particular...but when I repotted the lily in the same type soil, placed it back in the same water at the same temp, they invariably reverted to back to purple.  The only difference was that I had added fertilizer to the pot and have to assume that a lack of nutrients was the cause.

Other circumstantial evidence....Hydrangea are one of the few flowers to change between blue and pink, so it is not an expected occurrence.  And the blooms on Hydrangea are blue at low pH and pink at high pH and even then it is a reflection on the uptake of Aluminum and not the pH per se.  A hydrangea grown in soil lacking Aluminum should be pink despite the pH ( I think<g>).  Whereas the lilies I have grown are blue at a high pH with fertilizer and I assume,as my water flowed constantly, they were also pink at the same pH when lacking fertilizer.

Finally, in the book by Charles O. Masters 'Encyclopedia of the Water-Lily', he expounds quite a bit on soil and water conditions and the only reference to pH being a factor is that he found lilies grew best ( in natural waters) at a pH range of 6.5- 8.6.  The only effect he mentioned related to low pH was that lilies in oligotrophic, acid waters tended to be smaller.  He mentioned nothing to do with pH and color.

So my saying pH has no effect on flower color is intuitive and not based on any hard evidence....more on a lack of evidence.<g>

[PondmaninAL]

Thank you, Joyce and Craig for your input.

[Joyce]

And FYI: The 'blooms' on a hydrangea are not truly blooms, but bracts which are modified leaves.
Just like dogwood blossoms which are truly bracts, and poinsettias which are truly bracts, hydrangeas modify their leaves into clusters of bracts to simulate flowers.
The true flowers are miniscule greenish-white bumpy thingamajigs in the midst of all the beautiful colored bracts.
http://www.missouriplants.com/Whiteopp/Hydrangea_arborescens_page.html

And no matter what the soil pH, the true hydrangea blooms do not change color much.
Only the bracts change color, and the bracts only job is to mimic big beautiful blooms well enough to attract pollinators.

But a water lily is a true flower....no bracts involved.

So comparing hydrangeas to water lilies is not a very good idea.
You can't compare the effect of pH on bracts to the effect of pH on petals, or vice-versa.
Unless you wanna compare the effect of pH on the color of hydrangea bracts and water lily pads...which both are modified leaves...then it would make sense.   

[Craig]

Boy, oh boy...okay this may sound petty, but then who expects other from me?<g>....but a plant modifies nothing, that is in large part a function of natural selection; and no trait arises to serve a perceived function, that is LaMarckianism or the theory of acquired characteristics, a theory that was proved incorrect long ago.  Bracts are an adaptive analog to petals and not a simulation.  So they are the same, only different.

But as to the validity of comparing Hydrangea and its bracts with Nymphaea and its petals...it is indeed entirely feasible.  Flowering plants (Angiosperms) underwent an explosive evolutionary radiation about 100 million years ago and during that time of rapid speciation petals are know from the fossil record to have arisen independently multiple times.  Some petals evolved directly from modification of bracts and others, like the case with bracts, are modified leaves.  As it happens, the Nymphaea are in the order Ranales, a group whose petals are modified leaves.  So bracts and petals have more than enough in common to allow for comparison.

Perhaps more importantly is how colors are produced, as that is the level at which differing pH would operate.  In both bracts and petals color result from pigments produced in cellular organelles called chromoplasts, so even if bracts and petals were not so similar in origin, the source of color is identical and comparisons of the effects produced by varying pH is indeed valid.

[PondmaninAL]

Thank you Craig, for that clarification.

[Julles]

You sparked my curiosity, so I had to go and Google LaMarckism.  Here's one explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism

[Joyce]

Hmmm...I am confused Craig. 
You start out first by saying "but a plant modifies nothing"...then you go on to say...
"Some petals evolved directly from modification of bracts and others, like the case with bracts, are modified leaves. "

Sounds like what I said in my previous post: Bracts are modified leaves.    

I don't get it...I don't mind being corrected...but if a plant modifies nothing?     

[Craig]

<<hydrangeas modify their leaves into clusters of bracts to simulate flowers.>>

I don't disagree that hydrangea have bracts or that bracts are modified leaves.  It is the way you are phrasing it that is off.  I never said anything to the contrary.

Your statement implies a hydrangea has control over whether the leaves will be modified into bracts to simulate flowers and they cannot do that.  That is what I mean by a plant can modify nothing.  That they have bracts is a function of their evolutionary history, selective pressures modified the leaves into bracts, not the hydrangea.  It could have been an adaptation or it could be an exadaptation...either way the hydrangea was just along for the ride.  And evolution is not directed, so that bracts appeared was in no way an effort to simulate flowers.  Believe it or not, that line of thought is known as the 'refrigerator fallacy' which in short holds that just because all your neighbors have a fridge it does not mean you need one to survive.  In this case, just because  most flowers have petals, it does not mean that there aren't other adaptations (such as bracts) that are as functional.  There is no evolutionary imperative for all flowers to have petals...or bracts.  There are a number of apetalous flowers in nature.

Bracts and petals did evolve from common tissue and both have colors as a result of the chromoplasts....that is the common denominator and why it is therefore reasonable to expect there would be a correlation in the effects of pH whether the chromoplast reside in a petal or bract.

[Joyce]

Ooohhhhhhhhhh...OK...I get you now!