A spectrophotometric study has been made of the reddish‐orange product formed in the interaction of the WOODs reagent, 2‐hydroxymethyl‐6(2′‐hydroxymethyl‐5′‐hydroxy‐4′‐pyrone‐6′)pyranyl[3,2‐b]pyran‐4,8‐dione, with iron. Absorbance measurements by the mole ratio method gave definite evidence of a 2 to 1 mole tario product of the WOODs reagent to iron.