When science is fun!

I've done it again!  I feel like a nine-year-old who just won honorable mention at the science fair.  And I am so proud of myself.

Would you like to know what I did?

Here's the quick backstory: maybe four or five years ago I was given an orchid for Mother's Day.  It was a *beautiful* brilliant dark blue orchid.  I loved it.  After the orchid ceased flowering for the year, I put the orchid in my bathroom window, where it seemed to really enjoy the light and humidity.

Fast forward to May of the next year.  My orchid bloomed again.  I couldn't wait for more of those beautiful flowers.  And knowing nothing about orchids (this was my first), I wondered if that blue color was the real color of the flowers.

So the orchid bloomed again.  And it was white.  Just plain white.  No variations of white, or anything like that.  Just white.  It was nice, but it seemed a little boring, honestly.  I've never been a huge lover of white.  When the orchid was finished blooming, it was returned back to the bathroom windowsill again for the year.

Fast forward to May of the next year.  I could see the orchid was growing flower buds.  I figured if someone else could color the orchid, why couldn't I?  So I googled "how to color an orchid," and it turns out, it's extremely easy to do.  I followed the instructions, and was rewarded with a colored orchid.

(I'm embarrassed I don't remember what color I colored it!  And I can't locate any pics of it, or any original pics at all.  I just remember it turned out to be really pretty.)

Fast forward to this year.  I returned from The House of Goodwill after a couple of weeks, only to discover my orchid had developed large, unopened flower buds.  They were far enough along that I was afraid it was too late to perform the magic color-adding surgery, but I decided to try anyway.

And you may have guessed by now, it worked!  And I love the results!  Here are my orchid pics:

Here is how the orchid looked at the end of April.

Several of the buds were on the verge of opening.

So to alter your orchid's color, you just take a sharp knife and slit the woody stem, about half way through.  (You have to be a bit careful, obviously if you go all the way through you will be removing the top half of the stem, with all its flowers.)

Once you have your slit made, you take food coloring (in whatever color you like) and put a few drops on a cotton ball.  Put the cotton ball over the stem slit, and affix it with a grocery bag twist tie.

That's it.

Now just wait for the color to be absorbed through the plant stem, so it can pass into the flower buds.

It looks like I slit my orchid's veins and made it bleed!

Here is an orchid bud a day or two later.

You can see the color has been absorbed.

And here is the "after" of my beautiful white-pink orchid!

I love how it turned out!

I am guessing because the operation took place when the buds were almost open, they probably didn't absorb as much of the color as they might have otherwise.

But that's just a guess, maybe I just didn't use enough food coloring?

I can't imagine how they got the orchid as blue as the one I was initially given.

But isn't that what's fun about science?  The experimentation?

Up close, these blooms are so pretty and delicate!

Update: I have a second "branch" of the orchid developing buds.  I applied the same process to this one; this time I did it while the buds were still very tiny.  So I'll see if that makes a difference in the amount of color absorbed.

I used to see orchids in the store and never bought them (probably because they seemed a little expensive...I can't help it, when you have the cheap gene it's hard to turn off.)  But I was given this orchid, and I've enjoyed it so much!

What's great about orchids?  Well, aside from changing their colors, they are REALLY easy to take care of!  Orchids only need water about every two weeks, so they're super easy to keep alive, even when you're constantly traveling and moving around. 

You are supposed to water an orchid by placing the plastic pot (with holes in the bottom) in an inch of water every two weeks.  It just needs to sit for five minutes till the water is absorbed by the roots.  I just put mine in a pool of water in the bathroom sink for a few minutes while I'm cleaning.

I also bought a spray at the grocery store that is an orchid fertilizer.  It's simple to apply: just spray the leaves and stem with it.  I try to do this once a month while the orchid's in the sink.  The orchid must have really liked it because it has TONS of flowers this year.

And that's it!

So Marie Curie I'm not.  But I've taught myself to successfully make compost and change the color of orchids.  (I'm sure my son thinks I've lost my mind every time I make him admire the bugs in my compost.)  

If you had told me when I was ten years old that these are the things that would thrill me thirty-five years later, I probably would have felt really, really sorry for my future self.

But they do.  And I'm sure my elementary school science teachers would be proud.

When your pleasures are simple, it's amazing how much joy life can hold.