6pm
6am
Every single paper mentions the color change as a sign that the reaction is proceeding, and sure enough, 12 hours in and it’s pushing a brick-red-roux color. The change is from the reduction of silver particles by ascorbic acid, altering the way light is reflected. As the particles reach nanometer scale, the individual particles are coated in a sort of bio-film, and a negative charge picked up from the ascorbic acid, among the many other plant metabolites, keeps the silver particles from aggregating.
A good handful of the papers centrifuge the resulting solution, and dry it in an oven, to collect the silver nanoparticles before continuing with their work. I’m short one centrifuge, but might fuck around and build one.
My next step is deciding what concentration the resulting liquid should be used at. I’m a little disappointed the previous post has so few likes, because from this point onwards I’m proceeding blindly, but that’s what I get for a journal with so many words and no pictures of flowers 
If anyone has any thoughts on how much silver actually makes it inside of a plant when using STS or CS, or if you’ve ever heard of an attempt to reverse a female plant with silver nanoparticles, feel free to drop a line. There’s no shame in being over our heads here. On the contrary — that’s entirely the point