Guest poster Anne Osterrieder discusses iridescence, caused by ‘structural colour’. This article was originally posted on the Annals of Botany blog as My favourite colour is structural colour on July 11th, 2012.
What do peacocks, CDs and certain plants have in common? They all have multi-coloured parts – feathers, surfaces or petals – which change their hue depending on the angle you look at them. This physical phenomenon in which an ordered repeating surface structure rather than a pigment gives an object its colour is called iridescence.
Iridescence has evolved multiple times in plants and occurs in a lot of land plant families, from angiosperms to algae and ferns. It can impact on how insects and animals see plants. Dr Heather Whitney, a plant scientist from Bristol University, was awarded the President’s Medal of the Society of Experimental Biology (SEB) last week for her novel and interdisciplinary work. Heather studies how plant surfaces become iridescent and how iridescence influences plant-animal interactions. (more…)
Not logged in