Significance Helicoidal architectures are widespread in nature; several species adopt this structure to produce brilliant colorations. Such chiral architectures are usually left-handed in plants, with the only exception found in the cell walls of epicarp cells of Pollia condensata , where both handednesses are observed. Here, we aim to understand the origin of handednesses by analyzing optical and mechanical responses of single cells. Surprisingly, we discover that left-handed and right-handed cells show different distributions of spectra and elasticity. We verified by using finite element analysis simulation that the elasticity of helicoids is sensitive to the ratio of cellulose/cell wall matrix. Our findings reveal that cell wall composition affects the helicoidal architectures, suggesting that chemical composition plays a role in morphogenesis of the chirality reversal.