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How Does Food Coloring Affect A Plant's Growth?

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Barbara DeWalt Profile
Barbara DeWalt answered
Adding food coloring to a plant’s water won’t affect its growth, but it will change the color of the flower – and, if you use enough, the leaves and stems, too.

How Can I Dye A Plant Using Food Coloring?
This is an experiment that works best with cut flowers. You can use a potted plant instead, but you’d have to use a substantial amount of food coloring in order to see any effect.

A plant with white flowers works best – white daisies are the most popular. Put several drops of food coloring into the water that they’re standing in, and then wait several hours.

After a while, you should start noticing a slight color to the flower petals, and if you’ve put enough coloring in, the stems and leaves might develop a colored tint as well.

Blue food coloring works really well – you won’t notice a difference if you use green, and red won’t be so noticeable.

Is Food Coloring Harmful To Plants?
No, not really – food coloring has to be pretty safe, as it’s meant for human consumption. Other types of dye (hair dye, fabric dye, and bleach) can be very harmful to plants, though, so be careful what you use.
Anonymous Profile
Anonymous answered
Plants absorb all colors except green, which it reflects, causing it to be the color green.

If you were to cover a plant in any food coloring that completely changed its color, you would actually be preventing is absorption of the color that you have changed it to.

The effects would vary depending on the color. Plants have been shown to grow differently in blue light rooms as opposed to red light rooms, but they still grow. The effect really lies in what does the plant do with that particular color you are preventing it from absorbing.

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