if i understand your question ... you have harvested 'open pollinated' seed ... off an unnamed plant ... and you want to know the 'cultivar name' of the potential seedlings ... is a non sequitor ... as a CULTI-VAR ... cultivate varietal's definition ... has certain meanings .... stated another way ... not many things.. come true from seed ... and its usually the species plants.. as that is part of the definition of being a species ... perhaps you could research if there are any white species Althea ... [ever wonder why this plant has two female names????] .. sharon and althea???? ... crikey.. Rose also.. 3 names ....lol] anyway .. i digress ... i dont think there is an answer to your question ... good luck with your seeds.. if you come out with some magnificent cultivar ... maybe you can name it ... try for a 4th female name ... lol maybe in a decade or two... you can talk some wholesale grower.. to put it into production .... though i am not sure we need another self sowing ROS .... ken Here is a link that might be useful: link

Are you sure there is only one trunk coming out of the ground? I bought one several years ago that was supposed to be double lavender. It had two trunks. One plant is lavender and the other is the double deep pink (so called red). I do know that some of the mail order nurseries (i.e., Burgess, Henry Fields, Four Seasons)advertise grafted altheas with different colored blooms on one bush. I would guess you may have one of these.

Marg, you likely have a branch that has mutated and produced the different colored flowers. Let us know how things turn out next year :)

Hey - to me, I don't think they are ripe. I think they need to be left on the parent plant until the pods turn brown and open up. You could try planting the seeds you have ... by cracking open the pod and then planting the seeds inside. At my old house we had about 15 mature rose of sharon bushes and my dad and I would have to go out in the winter and clip off the dried out seed pods because when they would open, if there was a strong gust of wind, the seeds were all over the ground... and left some not so nice suprises the next spring when we had thousands of seedlings coming up ... but that was because we had so many ROS. Anyways, if I were you, I would possibly try some of those individual seeds, if those do not work, in fall when leaves are coming off the trees, ask your friends to check out all of their pods... a lot should be brown and dried out... that is when we've always had great luck with seeds. If you can get some then, I would store them and then plant them the following spring unless you have means to store them inside over the winter. Anyone else agree/disagree? God Bless, Matt