Does temp affect bloom color?

[SaraJean]

I purchased a phal bellina back in late June. When I unpacked it, there were 2 blooms open and they had spectacular lime green edges on the petals and a bright purple lip. The buds, unfortunately, lasted only 2 days when we got a heat wave of over 100+ degree temps. The two other buds also blasted during this time.
Good news is I got another two buds to develop and open (yay! no bud blast!) except these are cream colored petals with a vibrant fuchsia lip. Still a very pretty flower, but I loved the green on the first wave of blooms.

So whats the deal? With my plant growing outside, can the high summertime temps affect the color of the blooms?

[estación seca]

Yes. Especially the pink/violet anthocyanins are very temperature-dependent across a wide range of plants. There are a lot of roses, for instance, that are much pinker in cool weather.

[Cym Ladye]

Light or lack of it will also affect color, especially greens which will tend to bleach in bright light.

[Kasiopea]

I also was wondering the same, I have an oncidium burgundian that is usually a very nice dark solid burgundy color with white trim on the lip, and this summer is bloomed "tiger" striped blooms. Burgundy stripes on yellowish background. Kinda like a Wildcat. I first though there was something wrong with the plant and after examining it found nothing wrong with it. Couple weeks later at a local orchid show I saw a couple Burgundians, all same splotchy color. Can it be heat related?


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[Fairorchids]

As stated above, both temperature and light levels impact on flower colors, and shape.

Here are two flowers from the same plant, grown in NJ:
R = outdoors in full sun since June 1st, blooming in Aug.
L = in greenhouse w thermostat set at 55F, blooming in Feb after drab Dec/Jan.

[Kasiopea]

Great example thank you


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[SaraJean]

That is really interesting, I didn't even consider that my light levels could be bleaching the green out. I need to find an easy to use light meter and would love to hear anyone's suggestions. Thanks for the replies!

[NYCorchidman]

For red (and similar tone) flower colors will intensify under cool/bright conditions.

You can have it warm and bright, but then the intensity won't be as great at all.

Cold and too dark won't bring out the good intensity, either.

The reason behind it is that under cool temperature, the plant is better able to convert sugar made during the daytime under light condition (hence brighter = more sugar made!) into this red pigments.
So more sugar, more pigments. cool and bright!

You can easily see this in flower with some white mixed with red. Fully red flowers might not affected so much, but the clarity of the color will be lower under hot conditions.
With white flowers with some red, when flowered under warmer than ideal conditions, the red can totally disappear.

I had super waxy fragrant red phal before.
It was a great example because it was one of those ever bloomer. The winter flowers were always very dark intense red all throughout and the summer blooms had lots of white part, or more precisely, I would say it looked more like white flower heavily covered with red spots.

Yellow does not seem to be affected as much, if at all.