From Garden Flora: The Natural and Cultural History of the Plants In Your Garden by Noel Kingsbury:
“The first mention of hydrangeas in any text was in 8th-century Japanese poetry, with it being noted that the flowers have different colours in different places; doubles were noted too. Wild forms with mopheads are known from various places in the country, and it is likely these were first taken into cultivation during the Heien period. Over time the plants became more popular but were never a major subject of interest: possibly because wild plants were so common and easy to grow, they lacked any real cachet. The irony is that it was only after World War II, with introductions to Japan of plants from the United States, that hydrangeas have become really widespread in Japan.”
From Hydrangeas by Naomi Slade:
“[Many] hydrangeas have a ‘preferred’ colour, and they will lean towards this, regardless. Simply, some would rather be pink….”
Wow, it’s September 12 already; I must have dozed off at the end of August and woke up in a new month!
There are some hydrangeas in my garden that were planted before I bought the house over a decade and a half ago, that surprise me every spring with a new batch of blooms. Colors vary — as hydrangea colors like to do — and this year one of the plants produced a couple of the most intense pink blooms I’ve seen so far. I didn’t do anything to encourage this color (though we did have an inordinate amount of rain, especially in the spring and early summer), so, apparently, the hydrangea decided to pink itself out.
When processing these photos in Lightroom, these two blooms are interpreted as magenta — magenta being the dominant color in the pink-to-red range accessible in the raw image file. Most white, blue, or purple hydrangea blooms will contain some green mixed among the petal colors, yet these pink ones didn’t — so, in the first gallery below you can see how I could shift green colors from dark to bright without any change to the pink in the flower petals. I often reduce luminance on green in my flower photos to blend the leaves more into the background and give the colorful flowers prominence; but in the third photo below, I did the opposite: I cranked the green all the way up to make the leaves look like they were lit separately.
My previous hydrangea posts for 2021 are:
Baby Bluebird … Hydrangeas (1 of 2)
Baby Bluebird … Hydrangeas (2 of 2)
More Bluebird Hydrangeas! (1 of 2)
More Bluebird Hydrangeas! (2 of 2)
Thanks for taking a look!