white flowers on Delphinium
 

That is really an amazing anecdote but we cannot verify its authenticity
from here.

Not amazing to me at all. Hybrid plants revert to something else all the time.
I have a purportedly dwarf pink Monarda which reverted to the tall red type. A
red butterfly weed which gradually became orange. It is unlikely that a blue
Delphinium would become white, so I think it is more logical to suppose that he
had two seedlings and one died.
Iris,
Central NY, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40
"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming
train."
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

white flowers on Delphinium
 

That is really an amazing anecdote but we cannot verify its authenticity
from here.

Not amazing to me at all. Hybrid plants revert to something else all the time.
I have a purportedly dwarf pink Monarda which reverted to the tall red type. A
red butterfly weed which gradually became orange. It is unlikely that a blue
Delphinium would become white, so I think it is more logical to suppose that he
had two seedlings and one died.
Iris,
Central NY, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40
"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming
train."
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

white flowers on Delphinium
 

That is really an amazing anecdote but we cannot verify its authenticity
from here.

Not amazing to me at all. Hybrid plants revert to something else all the time.
I have a purportedly dwarf pink Monarda which reverted to the tall red type. A
red butterfly weed which gradually became orange. It is unlikely that a blue
Delphinium would become white, so I think it is more logical to suppose that he
had two seedlings and one died.
Iris,
Central NY, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40
"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming
train."
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

white flowers on Delphinium
 

I was being sarcastic, Sweetpea.

The point was that anecdotal statements cannot be verified second-hand over
the internet. (Including yours.)

Sometime the plants you buy don't exactly match the labels. Especially in
garden centers where the customers "look at" labels by taking them out of
one pots and putting them back in another one. That has absolutely nothing
at all to do with plants having flowers "changing colors".

On the other hand, I have seen large plantings of hybrid Chrysanthemums have
a few individuals that were originally purple flowered produce yellow
flowered branches (some were was even a chimera of both colors in the same
flower) and variegation spontaneously appear in normally green leafed
plants.


Iris Cohen wrote in message
...
That is really an amazing anecdote but we cannot verify its
authenticity
from here.

Not amazing to me at all. Hybrid plants revert to something else all the
time.
I have a purportedly dwarf pink Monarda which reverted to the tall red
type. A
red butterfly weed which gradually became orange. It is unlikely that a
blue
Delphinium would become white, so I think it is more logical to suppose
that he
had two seedlings and one died.
Iris,
Central NY, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40
"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming
train."
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

white flowers on Delphinium
 

The original poster : I planted blue Delphiniums and they grew tall
(about a metre) and strong. At the end of the Summer (1998) I cut them
back to ground level and left them in. The next Spring (and every year
since) they have come up white; equally vigorous in growth and with a
storm of blossom on them.
I wonder if I could influence them in some way to change colour again
?

Are you absolutely sure what you have had from the second year on is
the same plant and not progeny of your original blue plant(s)? Our
local wild Delphinium species comes in both colors, with whitish being
far more common.

M. Reed