Subject: Puns and Roses
From: [email-masked] (BIOHEAD)
Date: 2 May 1994 06:46:08 -0700
Newsgroups: bionet.plants

To help answer ebial's question about how to keep cut roses healthy for
the longest period of time:

The principle is to keep the flowers supplied with material that WOULD have
been coming to them if they were still on an intact plant: water and
some sugar. The path of entry for those is now the cut surface of the stem,
immersed in a vase of water. The usual problem is that the cut surface
gets plugged up with mucous from microbes (bacteria) growing in the vase.

To slow the plugging up AND to provide nutrients, florists provide packets
of acidic powder that lowers the pH of the fluid of the vase, slowing
bacterial action. If the rose color is not sensitive to pH, there should
be no problem with using the packets. Some flowers (Hydrangias) have pigments
that, like litmus paper, change drastically with pH, and their color will
obviously be altered by acidification.

An alternative to the florists packets is to make a new surface to the cut
end of the stem, by cutting a bit off with a SHARP razor blade (that will
open new clean surfaces of xylem vessels), and to immerse the roses in
a vase filled with one part water and one part SPRITE, or 7-UP (regular, not
sugar-free). The soft drinks are acidic (carbonic acid) and provide sugar.
Be sure to change the solution at least once every 48 hours, or else bacteria
will build up in the Sprite.

Finally, the cut surface of the stems should be made at a slanted angle.
This allows the vase solution access to the surface when the flowers are
standing in the vase.

Hope this helps. An experiment would be to compare a vase of roses in water
with a vase of roses in the sprite solution. Let us know if you try the
expt!

						Ellmore
						Biology
						Tufts