Color Changing Flowers

[danielg]

Has anyone ever heard of color changing flowers. I found this crowdfunding project on IndieGoGo that is developing color changing petunias that turn red from white using biotechnology. Are there there other types of flowers that can change color?

link to the project: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/color-changing-flowers

 

[LouisFerdinand]

There are some tulips that start out with one color. As they age, stripes or swirls of a different color appear on the petals.

 

[Marck]

Greetings, welcome to the Forums.

Actually there are many species of plant that show floral colour shifts in nature, no artificial selection required.
In most cases, it appears that these coloor-changing flowers have evolved as pollinator signals, letting pollinators know which flowers should be visited. Flower color can also help limit visits form undesired pollinators that do not detect colour in that part of the spectrum.

As one example of example of floralcolour change, I offer Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow (Brunfelsia pauciflora 'Floribunda').
This evergreen shrub in the Nightshade Family (Solanaceae), native to southeastern Brazil, eloquently exemplifies the trait discussed, both with its polychromatic floral spectacle and by its poetically appropriate common sobriquet.