Changing the colour of my white orchid with food dye?

[RikkiSowtz]

I remember when I was a kid, about 8yo, we had a spiky leaf orchid with green & yellow flowers;

Being a kid, I poured brown vinager into it (why? IDK, I was an idiot kid and wanted to see what would happen), poor orchid,

The centre of the flowers turned a red-brown colour; still perfectly healthy though, was weird;

If I ever wanted to change the colour of my Orchid, could I water it using food dye? Assuming that's how they do those gross blue orchids in florists...

[Ghosthunt64]

Theoretically yes, the food coloring shouldn't do much harm. However, it would probably be a very uneven, horrendously over-saturated color, not to mention it would turn all the green parts a different color as well. Moreover, you'd probably have to do it as often as you fertilized to maintain the color. But it works for carnations so I don't see why it wouldn't work for orchids... If you really wanted to...

[Brooke]

The Phals with the outlandish color are injected with color at the base of the spike. If you search one you will find the hole.

Brooke

[RosieC]

Brooke is correct, and I believe they use a silver compound to get the blue, not a blue food dye.

---------- Post added at 01:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:15 PM ----------

I don't believe food die is carried up to the flowers of all types of plants. Works with some and not others. :dunno