Some flowers create blue halo to attract bees
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This 2015 photo provided by Edwige Moyroud shows a Hibiscus trionum flower. The region at the base of the petals contains a dark pigment but appears blue at certain angles due to an optical effect on the surface of the cells. The color makes flowers more visible to the bees. (Edwige Moyroud via AP)
Some flowers create blue halo to attract bees
By: Malcolm Ritter, Associated Press
April 22, 2021
Published: April 22, 2021
Lexile: 1050L
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Some flowers have found a nifty way to get the blues.
They create a blue halo, apparently to attract bees. That's what scientists reported last Wednesday. Flowers need bees for pollination. Bees are drawn to the color blue, but it's hard for flowers to make that color in their petals.
Instead, some flowers use a trick of physics. They produce a blue halo when sunlight strikes a series of tiny ridges in their thin waxy surfaces. The ridges alter how the light bounces back, which affects the color that one sees.
The halos appear over pigmented areas of a flower and people can see them over darkly colored areas if they look from certain angles.
The halo trick is uncommon among flowers. But many tulip species, along with some kinds of daisy and peony, are among those that can do it, said Edwige Moyroud. She works at Cambridge University in England.
In a study published last Wednesday by the journal Nature, Moyroud and others analyzed the flower surfaces and used artificial flowers to show that bumblebees can see the halos.
An accompanying commentary said the paper shows how flowers that aren't blue can still use that color to attract bees. Further work should see whether the halo also attracts other insects, wrote Dimitri Deheyn of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
Source URL: https://www.tweentribune.com/article/tween78/some-flowers-create-blue-halo-attract-bees/
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Animals
Science
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CRITICAL THINKING QUESTION
Why don’t all flowers do this?
Write your answers in the comments section below
Flowers have different surfaces and this is very uncommon.This helps them attract bees
The main idea is that some flowers create blue halo to attract bees.The flowers need to be pollinated by the bees.
some flowers create blue halos to attract bees. also from different angles they get lighter or darker. some of them creat blue halos when the sun heats them.
Some flowers have an interesting way to attract bees. Flowers need bees to pollinate. According to reports flowers create a blue halo to attract bees because that's the color bees are drawn to. But it is hard for flowers to make blue in their petals. So flowers use physics to create a blue halo. When the sunlight hits a bunch of tiny ridges on the flower's surface the ridges reverses how the light bounces back and affects how one can see it.
I found it very interesting that some flowers can turn blue halo when sunlight hits the tiny ridges in the thin waxy surface.
Some flowers get blue halos.
i think this is an interesting way to "attract" bees. Especially if it means we could breed those flowers to help pollinate other plants.
this article is about the blue halos around certain flowers that attract bees and the physics behind the trick
The main reason why I think not all flowers do it is because to get that perfect shade of blue, the plant has to be at the right angle, in the right light, and many other contributes too. Along with that, some flowers are already able to attract the bees more than others.
Not all flowers do that because halo trick is uncommon among flowers. The blue halo is unique and not all the flowers are able to do that.