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...

I really don't mind the different color blooms. I especially like the cream colored blooms. The temperatures here have changed recently. My roses have no fragrance at all that I can detect. The bush is rather small right now because of the hard time it had this past winter and the short growing season we have here. It's only now really beginning to come into it's own. The bush stands approximately 12 to 18 inches tall right now though. I looked at the pictures on the two sites you recommended and it certainly does look like the picture of Jean Kenneally on John's Miniature Roses. More than it looks like the Loving Touch. However on the Nor'East site I find it resembles the Loving Touch more. It's so confusing. The next miniatures I get will be from a supplier and I'll know what kind they are. Thanks for your response.

Irises do not change color - not on a permanent basis, anyway. It is possible that herbicide drift can cause temporary changes in iris pigmentation (do you use RoundUp or have a nearby neighbor who does?). If that is what happened to your irises, they will probably return to normal color next year, assuming they are not subjected to herbicide again. I don't believe there are any nutritional factors that can completely change an iris's color pigment, though growing conditions can certainly influence color saturation. It wouldn't hurt to have your soil analyzed for any possible nutrient deficiencies. The amount of available sunlight and ambient temperature can also influence color intensity to some degree, though not to the point of turning one color into an entirely different one i.e. purple irises turning white. There are, however, other possible explanations for these apparent flower color changes: Irises often do not bloom every year. It is possible that your dark colored irises neglected to bloom this year, while lighter ones (perhaps left by a previous owner) within the same planting area did bloom. If you dug your original irises from a bed where only purple irises were blooming, perhaps you assumed that you dug only purple irises. However, there may have been a number of other colors of irises in the original bed that weren't blooming at the time you dug but that did bloom later in your own garden. If you dug and replanted a bed within the last several years, it's possible a tiny piece or pieces of a previous iris planting remained in the bed and has now matured to blooming size. An animal or child may have uprooted a rhizome from elsewhere and dropped it into your garden without your knowledge, or a neighbor may have tossed unwanted rhizomes over the fence into your yard where they took root. It happens. Certain cultivars are far more vigorous growers than others, and in closely planted beds, the more vigorous growers will almost inevitably choke out the less aggressive irises over time. Your original irises may have been bee-pollinated within the last few years. The seeds from those crosses may have ripened, dropped, and germinated among the original plants, and now you have a bunch of new seedlings blooming within your original clumps. Iris seed does not grow true to the parent plant and may well have produced some new colors in your iris bed. On extremely rare occasions an iris may "sport", meaning the iris may produce an offset that differs noticeably in appearance from the original plant. HONORABILE is one well-known example of a cultivar that has produced several sports in its long history. The sport offsets, however, do not change the color or appearance of the original plant. The only way to get all of this sorted out is to place a tag around each bloomstalk to identify its color, then dig and divide all of the rhizomes 6-8 weeks after bloom, replanting each color separately about 2' apart so they won't crowd each other too soon. Remove any seed pods that may form before they have a chance to ripen to avoid a repeat of this problem in your garden.

I was wondering the same thing about some small [much larger than Jack-Be-Little] volunteer pumpkins. This seems to be the only pumpkins doing this. I assume that F2 revertion is the reason. My greeners [not all are greening] are F2 volunteers so they may be reverting back to some genetics on the seeds that had that gene. I love these smallish pumpkins in their shape and size...better than any on the market that I know of.