Reaching for the rainbows - Attempt on a Rainbow Peony

When spending my time extremely efficiently by hanging online and browsing a vast quantity of images online, I've found something called "Rainbow rose". A rainbow rose is typically a white rose, which has been colored artificially to have multitude of different colors.

As I want to pretend I've used my vacation to something useful, I wanted to make an attempt to create a rainbow rose. However, we currently have only dark red roses in our garden, so I could not use a white rose to test on.

However I decided to pick a white peony from our garden and made an attempt to turn it into a rainbow peony.

My equipment:
1 white peony
4 different food colorings
4 glasses for water
1 sharp knife

I cut the stem in 4 different sections. This didn't go as well as intended, as some sections were cut too thin an some fractured a bit. However, the finished peony with part of the stem cut seemed good enough.

After the stem was split, I filled 4 cups with water and mixed some coloring in the water. If I would have square glasses I would be delighted, as then the glasses could be closer to each other and the stems would be easier to get in the water.

Now the thinnest sections took some damage in the process.

When making a rainbow rose, the rose will get a slight tint of the color in the first day but can require up to a week to achieve deep colors in the rose petals.

In the same evening, this was the color the peony had got. The only color was blue and it was visible only on one side of the peony.

As I had let the peony sit in the water for two more days to see if any more colors appear, sadly nothing else happened. The only visible color was blue and even though I was a bit disappointed, I'm really happy I had managed to get the peony change the color a bit.

The main issues in this might be two things which didn't go as well as intended:

1. Some of the thin sections of the peony stem were damaged and it's possible they did not absorb colored water as intended.
2. The peony was fully opened already when picked up, as even with rainbow roses it would be better to pick a rose which is not yet fully open. I'm not sure what is the optimal time for this, but I'm assuming picking a fully open peony at least didn't help to achieve full potential of peony coloring.

All photos by me.

Read more!
Gilding the Lilies: Rainbow Roses and
Confetti Poinsettias
Found on page 16.