Chromatography With Natural Colours

Out of curiosity, I wanted to know if the colours in nature are made up of different colours too. So I decided to do chromatography on flowers, using this website as a guide.

Initially, I wanted to use the flowers hibiscus and Clitoria Ternatea for my experiment. Unfortunately though, I couldn't find the latter and so had to walk around my neighbourhood to find for other flowers. There were a lot of pink flowers, but according to the website, pink flowers may not work well. In the end, I found 2 red flowers (Hibiscus and Maule's Quince ), red Plumeria and Allamanda.

Materials:

- Flowers

- Filter paper

- Alcohol

- Clear glass jars

- Spoon/anything hard to crush the flowers

- Scissors

First, I crushed some of the Hibiscus petals using the spoon in the middle of the filter paper. I did this to take the pigments out. I expected red to come out, but surprisingly, a purplish colour went out instead. It's kind of wet, so I left it out to dry for a while.

While waiting for the hibiscus colour to dry, I crushed all the Allamanda petals. I forgot to leave a petal or 2 out to show you the flower.

Next I crushed the Maule's Quince petals. As it's really red, the purple colour that came out was much stronger than the Hibiscus's.

After that, I crushed the red Plumeria. If you see the petals, there is the colour yellow, but no yellow pigment came out, only the purple one. It's not as strong as the other purples, though.

I then cut a strip from the edge of the circle to the pigments. After filler the glass cups with water and some alcohol, I dipped the strip into the water. Next up is waiting!

From left to right, top to bottom: Hibiscus, Maule's Quince, red Plumeria, Allamanda.

After waiting for half an hour or more, these are the results I got:

Hibiscus and red Plumeria.

Maule’s Quince and Allamanda

From what I observed in the experiment, the red from the Hibiscus was made up of purplish brown and yellow, while the red Plumeria was made up of faded purple, faded yellow, and brownish yellow. The Maule's Quince was made up of purple, yellow, and a tiny bit of brownish yellow, and the Allamanda was made up of brown.

Conclusion:

When compared to the synthetic colours in the previous post, the natural colours aren't as strong as the synthetic ones. The colours that made up the synthetic ones mostly true to their colours; red is made up of red and pink, green is made up of green and a tiny bit of blue. However, in the case of colors from nature, the colours separated may not be the colours we originally see. The red in the Hibiscus and Maule's Quince was not made up of red, pink, or any colours that are close to it but purplish brown and yellow.

The colours of the flowers were really bright, but when mixed with water and separated, I observed that the colours are dark and dull and it seemed to always contained some brown. Meanwhile, the synthetic colours didn’t change much; they still have their brightness and colour. This might be because the particles of the natural colours dissolve in the water, while synthetic colours are synthetically made to retain its original colour.