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Raman spectra of pure synthetic indigo and of Maya blue of a Mexican clay sculpture are compared. The Raman spectrum of Maya blue shows extra bands assigned to vibrational modes of Bu symmetry as well as an increasing intensity of some other bands. The partial removal of the mutual exclusion rule for the centrosymmetric indigo molecule is supposed to indicate a loss of its planarity due to strong adsorption at the palygorscite matrix.
False colour infrared (IR) thermography was performed on a sunny summer day in the Berlin Botanic Garden. The main interest focused on blossoms of different size, colours and shapes: disk-, bowl- and funnel-like anatomy demonstrating various modes of light absorption and heating-up during the day. Some of the flowers were phototropic or even solar tracking. Blossom temperatures ranged from 18.0 to 33.3 °C (mean 26.3 ± 2.5 °C, S.D., n = 37) at 21 °C air temperature. Several thermograms showed honey- and bumblebees also. In some cases the results are compared with those of a contact-free IR thermometry. One winter- and one late-spring-flowering plant are included in the overview.
Maya Blue, a pigment composed of very low concentrations of natural indigo and the clay mineral palygorskite, is one of the most brilliant blue dyes, intensively used for more than 2000 years in Mesoamerica. It is extremely stable against environmental attacks and was applied by the Indians for inside and outside mural paintings, ceramics, textiles and for colouring their famous codices. In the present paper it was studied as a powder (compared with modern synthetic indigo) and as colour on tissues, a Maya clay head, and fragment IV of the famous Codex Huamantla. Investigations using Raman spectroscopy in the visible and near-infrared range showed a high degree of correspondence among all Maya Blue-carrying samples and a good agreement with synthetic indigo. Additional spectral lines may be explained by a transformation of the planar indigo molecule when binding to the palygorskite lattice. Thermal investigations of the original amatl paper of the codex and of recent paper from fig-trees showed a high similarity and thus proved that this tree was chosen for paper making by Mayas, Aztecs and other Indian tribes. This was also true for the codex.
Thermal investigations using infrared (IR) thermometry and false colour thermography were carried out on flowering plants in the Botanical Garden of Berlin and in a private garden. Special interest went to phototropic plants that orient their blossoms towards a light source (mainly the sun) and within this group to solar trackers (heliotropism) that follow the path of the sun during the day. Best known among the latter is the sunflower. Bowl shaped flowers comparable to satellite disks focus the solar radiation effectively on their centre, resulting in a warming of the female organs at that point. Temperature differences above ambient can be as high as 10.7 K with a mean value of 6.0 K. Pollinating insects were often observed sun-basking in the bowls or on the flower disks attracted by energetic rewards in form of nectar and heat.