Question: About a year ago at a show, I bought a beautiful chimera, ‘The Alps’. It has bloomed profusely since then, but now seems to be reverting to solid blue flowers. What can I do now?
Answer: As a commercial grower, this is the type of question we get frequently from growers. Often times a chimera, fantasy, or multicolor blossomed variety will turn a sold (or different) color, even though it was blooming “true” when purchased. Unfortunately, this is the nature of many such unusually-colored varieties. The same genetic nature of these varieties that makes them so unusual also makes them more unstable. In fact, many of the pinwheel-blossomed varieties (chimeras) that are now available, first appeared as sports, or genetic mutations, of a multicolor or fantasy-blossomed variety. Sometimes a chimera will revert to its original form–some of our plants of ‘The Alps’, for example, have also reverted to a solid color (in our case, to white flowers).
The advice is preventative. Blooms are more likely to turn a solid (or different) color when the plant is stressed in some way. Most often this will mean too warm a growing environment and is a common problem during the summer for those growers without air conditioning. Less likely forms of stress include over-fertilization, too much light, improper water or soil pH, or a toxic reaction to an insecticide or other chemicals. If you’ve grown the variety before, and it has a history of being unstable, or you can’t provide a less stressful environment, a little “insurance” might be wise. Put down a few leaves (or crown, if a chimera) of those varieties that are most likely to “sport”, keeping in mind that not all the plantlets produced by those leaves may be true in color. This way, you’re likely to have young plants ready of the variety when the inevitable finally happens