Have you seen the photo of a dandelion that appears to be burning in different colors? If you look online, you'll find the original photo, taken by Gregory Gomer, which shows a dandelion burning in usual fire colors. So, the viral image appears to have been Photoshopped or otherwise enhanced. It's still a great excuse for a fire experiment!
For the past few weeks, I've burned every 'wish dandelion' or dandelion seed head that I could find in South Carolina, Texas, and Nebraska. I've burned dandelions from ditches, dandelions from fields, dandelions treated with chemicals, and dandelions spritzed with flame colorants. A couple of my results are shown above. While you can get a dandelion to burn in multiple colors, the colors seem restricted to shades of orange, yellow and red. My next test is to burn a whole bouquet of dandelions, just in case I haven't been using a large enough sample size.
Have you burned dandelions trying to get the color effect? Have you seen anything unusual?
