Colored Queen Anne's Lace

Did you know you can dye these flowers?

You know weird things stick in my head. I used to read the parts of standardized tests for entertainment, then was surprised there were questions. "Oh, goody! I get to read now! And what's this? Questions about this stuff. How convenient that they're on the same page!"
Yeah, and I'm supposed to be one of the smart ones.

Anyway, some book I read as a kid had the old neighbor lady, or the aunt, and the little girl dyeing flowers. "And the queen anne's lace, we did that in so many colors..."

So finally we tried it. We picked some at a nearby vacant lot (which has since been mowed), brought it home, and put them in water. We have red and blue pretty clearly; the green is starting to come up. I think the orange and purple are too weak.

How do you do it? Just put food coloring in the water. It takes a day or two for the color to show up, so be warned. And don't be shy about drops in the water. Six or seven isn't too much.

Neat art project for little kids; botany lesson in how plants get water for older ones; interesting field trip or time-killer for all. There you go.