Hands in the Dirt: Very Peri

​Photo and article by Donna Iverson 
 
Pantone’s color of the year for 2022 is “Very Peri,” i.e. periwinkle, or lavender blue. When it comes to flowers, blue is very rare and native blue flowers even rarer. Only about 10 percent of flowers are blue.
 
That may be part of the reason why blue is the favorite color of so many people. According to botanists, it is also the favorite color of bees.
 
As a blue flower enthusiast, I am more and more interested in incorporating native plants into the environment. So what flowers are both blue and also native to North America?  
 
Turns out, the list of native blue flowers includes clematis (shown above), indigo, liatris, iris, aster, blue flax, lavender, salvia, columbine, lupine, bluebells, first-me-nots, lobelia, morning glory, purple coneflower and violets.
 
The list of non-native blue flowers includes crocus, dayflower, lilacs, creeping bellflower, chicory, grape hyacinths, and ironically,  periwinkle.  Many of these plants are invasive, although I have always welcomed them into my garden and would not try to eradicate them. But future plantings will be native varieties.
 
Historically, the native blue-flowered indigo plant was especially prized by ancient peoples. It was grown and traded in Asia, West Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas. A history of the color blue and the importance of the indigo plant in world history is richly explained and illustrated in a recently-published children’s book titled “Blue” by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond and illustrated by Daniel Minter, a Caldecott honor winning artist.
 
And finally, to pretty much negate everything you’ve just read, scientists insist that there are no such things as blue-flowered plants. They claim that blue colored flowers are the combination of the nature of our visual photoreceptors and wavelengths of light. They insist there are no true blue pigments in plants. If you want to try to unravel this mystery, read David Lee’s book “Nature’s Palette, the Science of Plant Color.”  Quoting Kermit the Frog from Sesame Street, Lee says “It’s not that easy being green.” “ It’s even harder to be blue.”

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