Delphiniums changing color?

Question

A few weeks ago I planted three potted delphiniums. All bloomed a beautiful sky-blue. A bad storm bent the two flowering stalks on the middle plant, so I cut them and brought them into the house to enjoy. There was one yet-to bloom stalk left on the plant. Today it bloomed, and it is BRIGHT purple! It's a lovely color, but the dramatic overnight change has me baffled.

]You can see several photographs of it between the two sky-blue plants on this page of my blog:

http://brendacoulter.blogspot.com/2008/07/beautiful-mess-in-garden.html

Has anyone seen anything like this before? What gives?

Answer 1

Mine did that!  I don't know if it was a reaction to stress from being transplanted or what, but I was sorta disgusted because I wanted that sky blue too.  

I've read it can be due to ph of the soil, or from temperture changes effecting the genes, or even that the color genes themselves are unstable.

I ended up giving up on delphiniums because of this, they would change colors and then fail to survive winter.  I did everything I could but they were more wilfull than I expected, lol.

Answer 2

OK.  Most Delphiniums are seed produced.  My money is on the likelihood that your plant had more than one stem in the pot.  That is, two separate individuals from different seeds that were sown in the propagation flat and grew together to look like one plant.

when you bought it - only one flower was open.

Answer 3

This is probably the result of cross pollination..and here is the plant fighting back and showing it's true colours, enjoy it.