cineraria

Whenever I'm in a city for the first time, I'll often check to see if there's a cineraria conservatory there.

As colorimetry has occupied part of my career for years, I'm very perceptive of color and coming across a huge variety of brilliantly colored cineraria was quite an eye-opener [duh].

As I've stressed, the blue colors you'll see in the cineraria images in these links is only a rough guide to what you'll actually see in real life—the artificial colors just can't match the real thing!

There are two interesting properties of many (but not all) cineraria flowers and they are that the color of their petals is most intense (saturated) at their outermost extent and that this color progressively and completely fades to pure white near the center of the flower; and second, there is a phenomenal range of hues and levels of saturation within each color group (with the blues being the most spectacular).

Not being in my home city, between conference times I found myself occupied wandering through the nearby park where to my surprise I stumbled across a conservatory full of brilliantly colored cineraria flowers (Pericallis × hybrida), many of which where dazzling shades of blue—blues that were way outside the color gamut range of normal color film, color TV, printing and dyed objects.

Cineraria come in all sorts of dazzling colors but those that I'm principally interested in are the blue ones.

(If you're unfamiliar with cineraria, do an image search on "blue" + "cineraria".) The important aspect of seeing cineraria in public gardens' conservatories is that one can see, compare, and experience this vast variety of colors that would be very rare to experience elsewhere.

(If you're unfamiliar with cineraria, do an image search on "blue" + "cineraria".) The important aspect of seeing cineraria in public gardens' conservatories is that one can see, compare, and experience this vast variety of colors that would be very rare to experience elsewhere.

Cineraria come in all sorts of dazzling colors but those that I'm principally interested in are the blue ones.