breed your own black flower...
It's a tricky one, VERY tricky!
An obsession
Because black flowers are so incredibly rare many plant breeders become obsessed with creating them. Victorians and Edwardians went to extraordinary lengths to obtain plants with black flowers.
In 1850 Alexandre Dumas published The Black Tulip, a novel reflecting the obsession with elusive plants.
There’s also the tale of the shoemaker who had a black tulip and bartered with plant breeders to sell it at a good price.
With the sale secured the breeders smashed the plant to smithereens saying what an idiot he was to give it so cheaply.
They were the only others in the world who had a black tulip, he could have asked any price!
How To Create A Black Flower
If you start from scratch with normal flowers you're going to have to become your own plant breeder. Take the male parts of the flower, the anthers, which contain the pollen off the flower when they are mature.
Put this pollen onto the female part, the stigma, of a different plant’s flower. Plant breeding is really an art and it can take a lifetime, or more, to get the characteristics you really want. Black flowers are desired precisely because they are SO hard to produce.
The Gene Scene
If you want to get more technical you need to tinker with a plant’s genes. These are contained in the chromosomes within the nucleus of a cell and give instructions to the cells to make the pigments for the flower.
You’ll need to find out which genes on which chromosomes contain the information for making pigments.
Work out a way of getting these genes to repeatedly order the cell to make pigments – get the genes to ‘over express’ – and after lots of trial and error you might end up with a black flower.
Want to learn more?
Check out the following books...
Black Tulip
By Alexander Dumas
More of a thrilling read than a science tome, but worth a look if you want to read around the history of 'tulipmania'.
ISBN: 1587156865
And of course...
Karen Platt's book 'Black Magic and Purple Passion'
ISBN : 0-9545764-2-X
Try your hand at breeding a black flower (This is a full interactive feature and will take you to the interactive area of Planet-Science which requires 3rd party plug-ins and the latest Browser versions)
Enter the world of the flower breeder with The Pollinator. Use our simulator to breed different flowers in search of the elusive Black bloom.
It's tricky, just like in real life, but to make things a little easier our flowers only have three genes. Even so the possible results are accurate, so you'll still need to think carefully when choosing your flowers.
You are given 20 chances to perfect your technique before a little assistance is offered, so get your gardening gloves on and give it a go...
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