Why is blue relatively rare in nature?

Hey,look up!:))

Bluebottle fly, delphiniums, bougainvilla, blue perennial geraniums (Johnson’s blue), hydrangeas, many bell flowers, many scabiosa, Adenophora (Lady Bells), campanula, violets, lobelia, Jacob’s ladder, blue bunting, indigo bunting, blue spots on many warblers, lots of blue flowers in southern areas (Mexico,etc.). I’m rushed now but know there are more.

Hmmm, I remember reading somewhere that blue was a rare flower color, perhaps it was incorrect. But how many of your examples are truly blue, rather than purplish-blue, Gail?

Notably, no bird has a blue pigment, it’s all produced through interference.

Blue is blue. UV is not blue. Our eyes can’t see UV.

@lucillelucillelucille Yea! I was going to say… the sky is blue as well as water! Speaking of water, isn’t there many blue sea creatures?

There are blue stones. Blue topaz, sapphire, lapis lazuli are a few of them.

I don’t know if it’s rare or not, but I do know that I’m a sucker for a blue flower;
but blue food, not so much. I like blueberries, but I don’t like to look while I eat them.

What about the Blue Footed Boobie? (SFW)

The only known instance of an actual blue pigment in animals appears to be in frogs. All other blues in animals (fish, insects, birds, etc.) are produced by interference or rayleigh scattering (these are called “structural colors” because they’re caused by the physical form of the surface rather than by pigment), or by ingestion of blue plant matter. Aside from the “frog blue”, virtually all pigment-based colors in the animal kingdom are produced by combinations of only three pigments. These pigments are proteins, so at some point a mutation would have had to occur that created a gene capable of producing that particular protein. Such a mutation has occurred in frogs, but the rest of us will just have to fake it.

The plant world has evolved anthocyanins, which are bluish, but they’re sensitive to pH. In acid environments, they tend to go purple or red, and almost all living systems have a somewhat acidic chemistry.

@erichw1504 -There certainly are :)

Blue is definitely rare when it comes to food. No idea why.

The bird topic seems to be impressively answered.. I don’t think blue is that rare in terms of flowers. I remember from ecology that the color of the flower is an indicator of what kind of pollinator the flower uses. Reds indicate bird pollinators and blues indicate insect pollinators. (bees, for example, cannot see red)

I love this question. Interesting responses.

My eyes are blue and I’m in nature ;)

@J0E It’s an interesting mutation.

My jeans are blue… oh… nevermind.

From @syz‘s linked article:

“The question really is, ‘Why did we go from having nobody on Earth with blue eyes 10,000 years ago to having 20 or 40 percent of Europeans having blue eyes now?” Hawks said. “This gene does something good for people. It makes them have more kids.”

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Damn rednecks and their inbreeding.

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disclaimer: robmandu has a non-trivial amount of blue eyes.

@Harp So, if blue in the animal kingdom is (largely) a structural color, is the same for other colors, or are they pigments?

@syz The full array of colors can be produced structurally. Hummingbirds, for instance, have no red or yellow pigments, but check out this little Rufous. That’s all structural.

@syz , I think you make a valid point about blue. Firstly, there are virtually no foods that are blue and I think that psychologically we think of blue as being unnatural. I also believe that in general blue occurs less frequently in nature. I looked at a wildflower field guide organized by color and there are far fewer pages of blue flowers (including purple) than yellow, white or red. I suspect the same holds true among animals like birds, fish and insects.

Perhaps blue is just being overshadowed by green.

But there are flowers that are truly blue rather than violet, purple, lavender or other hybrids. Buy some flax seeds at the health food store; grind most of them in a little Krups grinder to sprinkle on salads, cereal, in soups etc. Then plant some in your pots of geraniums, etc. You will get a real sky-blue flower. Ditto with baptisia, brunnera (perennial forget-me-not), annual forget-me-nots, amsonia, true blue irises, Virginia harebells, mertensia, caryopteris

And some more images:

Stop me, please. @Syz: You can have a real all-blue garden without much trouble. (I forgot the friendly blue morning -glory.)

Don’t forget these

Your link wants me to click onto another “awesome link.” It mentions forget-me-nots, which I have already listed (both the annual and the perennial).

To go off on a slight tangent, you may or may not be aware of woad During my spinning days I experimented with woad, magic and mysterious stuff.

@Adagio: Lovely. I hadn’t had my quota of learning one new thing today. Thanks.

“There is no blue without yellow and without orange.” Vincent Van Gogh

And yet this entire planet is known as the blue planet. I think I saw somewhere that cobalt is the only natural (not reflected) blue in the world.

the oceans are the hugest biggest gigantistist part of nature….they’re blue!!

As long as we are mentioning blue flowers, we should not leave out Virginia bluebells, which make up in number for their small size and brief appearance above ground. Link
They will be putting on their usual early Spring spectacle at the local wildflower preserve.
I would say that part of the appeal of blue flowers is that they are relatively uncommon compared to other colors.

@LostInParadise: I forgot them. I have had mine die here; morning sun, moist shade with myrtle, lilies-of-the-valley, February Daphne, Jacob’s ladder, wild columbine, wild violets, bleeding hearts, and ferns. Va. bluebells should love it here. Maybe I will try some in my woods.

I wonder whether it is too cold. I am in zone 4.

There is also the old-fashioned bachelor’s buttons, both boring perennials and perky annuals.

Anybody mention the Texas bluebonnet?

Bluebonnets!!!

@robmandu : Forget the blue flowers, lovely as they are. Who is that delicious child?

@gailcalled, her name is Piper and she’s a little older now.

BLUEberries are purple

@robmandu Piper is gorgeous, although I am quite sure you don’t need me to tell you that!

Late to the thread