How to colour the labels of a dendrogram by an additional factor variable in R

Question

I have produced a dendrogram after running hierarchical clustering analysis in R using the below code. I am now trying to colour the labels according to another factor varia

Answer 1

Try

# ... your code
colLab <- function(n) {
  if(is.leaf(n)) {
    a <- attributes(n)
    attr(n, "label") <- labs[a$label]
    attr(n, "nodePar") <- c(a$nodePar, lab.col = varCol[a$label]) 
  }
  n
}
plot(dendrapply(hcd, colLab))

(via)

Answer 2

For coloring your labels, it would be the easiest to use the labels_colors function from the dendextend package. For example:

# install.packages("dendextend")
library(dendextend)

small_iris <- iris[c(1, 51, 101, 2, 52, 102), ]
dend <- as.dendrogram(hclust(dist(small_iris[,-5])))
# Like: 
# dend <- small_iris[,-5] %>% dist %>% hclust %>% as.dendrogram

# By default, the dend has no colors to the labels
labels_colors(dend)
par(mfrow = c(1,2))
plot(dend, main = "Original dend")

# let's add some color:
colors_to_use <- as.numeric(small_iris[,5])
colors_to_use
# But sort them based on their order in dend:
colors_to_use <- colors_to_use[order.dendrogram(dend)]
colors_to_use
# Now we can use them
labels_colors(dend) <- colors_to_use
# Now each state has a color
labels_colors(dend) 
plot(dend, main = "A color for every Species")

For more details on the package, you can have a look at its vignette.