Pollia condensata

STRUCTURAL COLOUR: STAR SPECIES NUMBER 8

Name: Pollia condensata

Special Power: The Bluest Blue?

Pollia condensata, sometimes called the marble berry, is a perennial herbaceous plant with hard, dry, shiny, round, metallic blue fruit. It is found in forested regions of Africa. The blue colour of the fruit, created by structural colouration, is the most intense of any known biological material.

The surface of the Pollia fruit has an especially smooth and transparent cuticle which reflects light as a mirror does (specular reflection). Beneath this glossy surface lies a special layer of cells which have an elaborate but unpigmented microstructure whose function is to reflect light within a narrow range of wavelengths. This structural colouration is created by Bragg reflection from spirally stacked cellulose microfibrils in the walls of these cells. The wavelength reflected depends on the height of the stack, which varies from cell to cell. Variability in the stack height allows more overall light to be reflected and this further enhances the glossy appearance, but it makes the fruit appear somewhat pixelated.

In addition to simply reflecting light of a specific wavelength, the spiral structure also causes light of other wavelengths to be modified so that the wavelength converges to within a narrow range before being reflected, which acts to amplify the light at that specific wavelength. This process of constructive interference produces the most intense colouration of any living organism. The total reflectivity is about 30% of that of a silvered glass mirror, and is the highest of any known biological material. The intense colouration makes the fruit attractive to some birds despite having no nutritional value. The birds sometimes decorate their nest with the berries, which over the long-term helps to disperse the seeds.

According to materials scientist Ullrich Steiner, who led the team which carried out the original research on structural color in plants,