Rick - if you google the word "chimera" - you will find lots of stuff - start in Wikipedia. Basically one plant has 2 different genetic materials in a tissue. If you start it from a leaf - the new plant will come from the cell of of of these materials - so instead of a pinwheel pattern - you will get solid color blossoms. The only way to get the baby blooming true - if you get a sucker growing from a bud on the stem or a bloomstalk. So people who want to produce many of them - lop the top of the AV crown - and make the plant produce suckers all over the place. Sometimes a bicolor AV mutates into a chimera - that's the only way to get a new chimera variety, Since they are harder to propagate - they cost more to purchase. irina

Violetval - as Mark mentioned - chimeras are not the most stable plants and if it sports, it is probably makes a good gift to the friends, no sense to hold to it. The good way to keep it true - is to harvest and root the suckers, Emerald City chimera (do not remember what is chimera and what is original plant - Emerald City or Emerald Love) - suckers pretty often for me. To rejuvenate the old plant you can take the crown off - and root it, the stump will give you chimera suckers if you keep it alive. There is a loss of vigor when the plant gets old - it can be a reason why it sported, second - if you do not repot it every 6 months - soil gets too acid - and here we go. If I see that the top starts blooming wrong - I would cut the top off - and let the suckers grow from under the older leaves - the ones that bloomed thue. The Chimera blossoms are tied to the way the tissue in a main stem is organised - it should be concentric circles of dark and light colored cells. If one of type of cells peters out with growth - you get solid color blooms, but the bottom of the stem is still organized properly - so the suckers will come true. Irina

Taryn, Chimeras are in their own group because they are literally 2 plants in one with both plants being partially expressed in the pin-wheeled colored flower. These unique plants are only stably propagated when grown from a sucker as opposed to being grown from a leaf, however, I have heard you can grow them from a flower-stalk if the stalk has large enough leaflets to allow it to survive to the point of producing plantlets (I have never been successful doing this). This also explains why they're so expensive because because the propagating expense is much greater. This website seems to give a good technical explanation: http://chimeraav.com/growing/what-are-chimera-african-violets-a-simple-explanation/

TGIF, by the way... DH is getting out of the hospital tomorrow - now part of his aorta is made of Teflon. Yukako is absolutely unique. It is a very stable chimera, it doesn't turn blue.Plus it is an easy hardy plant. If you root the suckers - you get true Yukako, another chimera with green stripes on white and another chimera with dark blue stripes on light blue petals - you really need to look - otherwise it not evident. More of it - it is a chimera - that sometimes gives you a chimera from the leaf. It holds the flowers for long long time - lots of AVs with green flowers do - and IMHO - even if you grow small amount of AVs - it should be one of them. I.