Blue Phal?

[labyrinth1959]

I am just curious if there is a variety of Phal where the bloom is a solid deep blue color.

[Roberta]

No. All of the blue Phals that you see for sale have been dyed. When they rebloom they will revert to their natural color which is usually white, though I have recently seen lavender Phals with blue dye (even more awful). In Japan, a lab created a transgenic blue Phal by incorporating the gene from an unrelated(non orchid) blue flower. It was kept under the watchful eye of a guard at the Tokyo Dome show... would cost thousands of dollars. And I think they only got one plant with fairly good form, the others were distorted mutants. Not something that is likely to ever be available for sale.

But the short answer is, there is no gene for blue coloration of any sort in Phals (or most other orchids, for that matter.) When an orchid is called "blue" or coerulea, it's actually lavender. Any sort of "real" (non-coerulea) blue is very rare in orchids of any sort - a few Dendobium species, the Vandaceous genus Cleisocentron, and the Australian terrestrial genus Thelymitra. The last has many really blue species, but they don't breed with anything else.

[labyrinth1959]

Thank you for the reply. I wondered about a blue Phal because I saw one for sale in a commercial gardening store that was gorgeous but very expensive and I nearly bought it. I have never seen another since which made me wonder if in fact they existed or were actually dyed. I am curious as to how they actually dye the flower. I would think that it would kill the plant or at the very least, destroy the blossoms.

[Dimples]

Dying flowers is easy. You can do it at home with some carnations and food coloring. Mix food coloring into the water in the vase and wait a few days. Make sure you cut off an inch of stem for a fresh end.

The commercial growers inject dye into the flower spike as the buds are forming, so the color is deposited in the petal tissue.

I’ve also seen some ugly colored phals. lately because the pattern underneath didn’t look good with the added color.

[Roberta]

If you have a chance to actually see one of these, look toward the base of the flower spike, and you can find the injection site. The dye is injected into the spike, so it doesn't get into the plant. I am sure that it's pretty easy to find dyes that aren't toxic to the flowers - as a kid, I played with taking a white carnation, splitting the stem at the base, putting one side in a container with water containing red food color and the other side in a container with the water with blue food color. And ending up with a flower that was half red and half blue. Same concept. Try it...have fun.