Determining the presence of Cyanidin and/or Delphinidin

You can determine whether a particular daylily produces cyanidin and/or delphinidin at home very easily.

Materials needed:

Isopropyl Alcohol and water (1:1 or 50% water and 50% alcohol)

Chromatography paper – can use coffee filters cut into two or three inch strips

Jar/lid – with opening about two or three inches wide

Quarter – should be fairly clean

Daylily flower

Put up to a half-inch of alcohol/water solution (just enough to cover the bottom) into a clean jar and cover.

Place a daylily leaf, upside down, on the chromatography/filter paper. Roll the quarter on the daylily leaf, squashing the cells in a line three/quarters of an inch above the end of the paper. Do this a number of times until the pigment appears dark on the paper. Keep the line narrow and do not extend it to the edge of the paper.

Place the paper, pigment end first, into the solution at the bottom of the jar. Take care not to get the pigment itself in the solution.

Cover the jar and set it aside out of the sunlight. The water/alcohol solution will move up the paper. The leading edge of the solution is called the solution front. Watch carefully and you should see the solution front rise up the paper (it may take a few hours).

When the solution front is close to the top of the jar, remove the paper and dry it. Examine the paper and you will see one or two spots of pigment on it. The red pigment, which moves up the solution faster, is cyanidin. The blue pigment, which moves slower, is delphinidin.

If two spots are present, the top red spot is cyanidin and the lower blue spot is delphinidin. In the case of a third spot, you may have found a new/different pigment in the daylily (sugars attached to anthocyanins will change the speed of spot migration).

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