What makes roses pink?

Question

What makes pink roses pink, and red roses red? I know it is a pigment, but is it a chemical, and whats its name?

Answer 1

...pink roses come from red roses and white roses forming a new rose...its called incomplete dominance...i forgot what part of the flower controls the pigment...youll learn that in bio lab

Answer 2

what makes u the color u are.?

Answer 3

Rose pigmentation is primarily based on flavonoids. It is a pigment family that produces the purples, reds and red-oranges. One subgroup of the flavonoid class are the ~300 anthocyanins that give red to purple to blue tones. Roses owe their red color to anthocyanins however they lack the anthocyanin pigments found in other flower species that produce blue coloration.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publica...

Roses produce  these to varying levels of saturation to create deep reds or lighter ones. This is controlled by several genes adding their expressed protein adding to the total amount of each pigment that adds to the final color.

Examples of anthocyanins contained in roses include: peonin found in R. rugosa and its many strong pink and purple-red hybrids but also in cardinal red ‘Europeana’ and ‘Adelaide Hoodless’.

Pelargonidin produces scarlet and shrimp-pink in modern roses like ‘Independence’ and ‘Tropicana’

Cyanidin, kaempferol and quercetin are other anthocyanins found in roses.

Anthocyanins are produced at fairly stable levels in rose petals but some plants do show more pigmentation as the summer UV level increases. Even white roses will get pink spots in response to aging in sunlight. The presence of the increased pigment offers more protection from the UV. Other plants show more color in autumn's cooler temperatures. A medium pink rose like ‘Queen Elizabeth’ may show darker blossoms in October.

A low soil pH will increase some anthocyanins causing roses to be darker or even shift coloration. A pH of 6.0 to 6.5 will produce deeper and clearer pigments in the same plants grown in soil at pH 7.0. A pH shift works to alter hydrangeas anthocyanin pigments from blue to pink in the same way.

Answer 4

The array of colours offered to us by Nature has always fascinated scientists who have put a great deal of effort into understanding both the structure of the various pigments but also the pathways leading to their synthesis. The final steps leading to anthocyanin are performed by an enzyme known as anthocyanidin glucosyltransferase. And in roses, this particular enzyme catalyses not one reaction – as is the case in the production of other flower anthocyanins known to date – but two reactions which lead to rose anthocyanin.