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Red flowers
- To: "carolinabirds@duke.edu" <carolinabirds@duke.edu>
- Subject: Red flowers
- From: Clyde Sorenson <clyde_sorenson@ncsu.edu>
- Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 10:01:47 -0400
- Delivered-to: pardo@metalab.unc.edu
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
- User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0
All,
It appears most insects don't see red well, so many red flowers do
appear to select for non-insect pollinators. However, most insects do
appear to see very well in the ultraviolet range (unlike most
vertebrates), and many flowers have patterns and features that can only
be discerned in this range, so often what we can see doesn't inform us
very well about what insects see. So, sometimes "red" flowers aren't
red at all to other creatures!
Take care,
Clyde Sorenson
Clayton and Raleigh, NC
clyde_sorenson@ncsu.edu