| EM, Sure, with genetic engineering, nearly anything is possible. If they can make glow-in-the-dark fish, they could move some blue pigment genes from a naturally blue flower into echinacea. One of my hobbies is amateur zinnia breeding. Of course, I am always on the lookout for anything unusual. There is no stable blue zinnia strain. But I have seen a few lavender zinnias that in cloudy weather without sunshine developed a near-blue tone of lavender. Subsequent exposure to the sun develops a magenta pigment that masks the light blue resulting in lavender. True blue has eluded zinnia breeders for centuries, and it will probably take genetic engineering to achieve it. This picture of one of my "echinacea flowered" zinnias has not been color corrected in any way. It was taken in the shade, and is somewhat underexposed, but I didn't correct for that either. I did upsample, sharpen, and crop the photo.
 MM |
