I'm afraid that every red flower I have dried turns dark no matter how you dry it, silica or hanging upside down. There is a rose that I found in a flower shop called "Mercedes" that is more dark orange that does dry red.

Perennial blue flax (linum narbonense) 'Heavenly Blue' can be grown from seed. It blooms in the morning, then the flowers are gone as the day heats up. The next morning, they are magically blooming again. They don't change color, but the bloom sequence is fairy like. I love this flower and it reseeds. Taking little room, you can weave these through other plants. I have some at the feet of roses. Linaria 'Canon J Went' is a toadflax that reseeds a lot, but the pale pink delicate spires on blue foliage is so nice. The blooms are constant and they look like teeny tiny snapdragons. My allium christophii bloomed back in April, but I still have the sparkler looking remains standing in the garden. I use wooden skewers to keep them upright at this stage. Some folks paint them, too! If you could use yellow and burgundy (looks good with blue), then I highly recommend coreopsis 'Redshift' as it changes from pale yellow and gradually turns more burgundy into autumn. It's about 3 feet high, but mine are very upright in full sun. I don't deadhead these and they just keep on blooming. Cameron Here is a link that might be useful: Heavenly Blue Flax

Could there have been a seedling in the pots and that's what's blooming now? The majority of my hardy hibiscuses are soft pink with a dark eye. They mostly come true from seed but one seedling turned out to be an intense pink with bigger flowers and different foliage - probably a throw-back to a parent of the bicolor...

Probably a change in the plant's cellular pH. I left this about hydrangeas somewhere else - it's a copy/paste job & might be slightly off topic, but you should be able to get enough out of it to find your answer. "Three different pigment groups - chlorophyll, flavonoids, and carotenoids - mixed in different proportions, give color to plants. By mixing and matching the three pigments, a near endless variety of colors can be created. E.g. most reds are the result of mixing orange carotenoids with magenta flavonoids. Cellular pH (not to be confused with soil pH) can have a profound effect on plant color. Even most experienced gardeners think that lowering soil pH produces blue blooms in hydrangea. Technically, it is only a part of the equation. Lowering soil pH makes aluminum ions more readily available for plant uptake. The aluminum is then available to bond with pigment compounds (anthocyanin, the colored component of flavonoids) changing the way color is reflected. Our perception is, blooms changing from pink to blue. The anthocyanidin group is what makes apples, autumn leaves, roses, strawberries, and cranberries red. They make blueberries, cornflowers, and violets blue. They also make some grapes, blackberries, and red cabbage purple. One of the things that changes the color of anthocyanins is the level of acid or alkali (the pH) in the cell surrounding the pigment. As cellular pH increases, the pigment changes structure and reflects different wavelengths of light. The anthocyanin reflects bright pink in acid cell environments, reddish-purple in neutral and green in more alkaline cells ...." Al