, New Study Says Blueberries… Aren’t Actually Blue?

This article is part of our Cocktail Chatter series, where we dive into the wild, weird, and wondrous corners of history to share over a cocktail and impress your friends.

If you squish a cherry or blackberry, their juices are dark and pigmented, as anyone who’s spent any time with a muddler can attest. But if you try the same with a blueberry, there’s no blue juice or pulp to be found. That’s because blueberries actually contain no blue pigments — so why do they appear blue to the human eye?

A new study, published on Feb. 7 in the journal Sciences Advances, discovered a unique structural mechanism behind this phenomenon. Fruits like blueberries, plums, and juniper cones develop a wax bloom on their outer layer, called epicuticular wax. A team of scientists based in Germany and the U.K. looked to this outer layer for answers, and examined its morphology. They found that the wax is made of unique nanostructures, and when light interacts with the structures, it leads to the chromatic blue and ultraviolet light reflectance that we see. The researchers refer to this type of color as “structural color.”

This study is the first to connect the thin, wax layer on fruit to its coloring. “Most plants are coated in a thin layer of wax which has multiple functions, many of them that scientists still don’t understand,” the press release for the study states. “They know that it can be very effective as a hydrophobic, self-cleaning coating. However,

This Article was originally published on VinePair

Similar Posts