Cream?

[igenlode]

Most unexpectedly, the tray of California poppies from last year, which have been blooming prolifically for the last month, has thrown up a couple of cream-coloured flowers alongside the neon orange ones! The entire bed of parent plants from which I originally gathered the seed were brilliant orange, and so are all the various self-seeded ones from this spring that I have allowed to grow in other pots... but the really weird thing is that the poppies in question are supposedly the overwintered plants which were quite definitely orange last year.

Apparently California poppies do have the genetic potential to come out cream in the wild, so I can only assume that this particular plant grew from seed set by one of the parent poppies in the same pot which happened to have mutated in colour!


The nasturtiums are all coming out too, in a range of oranges and yellows -- the poached-egg plants that were sown at the same time are not doing particularly well and certainly not flowering. I have planted some of the saved nasturtium seed from last year, rather belatedly, to see how it would compare.

The 'one surviving sage plant' has been attempting to flower again without great success and has now died or is dying, looking very sick alongside the self-seeded replacement which I transplanted back into the same pot -- their lifespan is clearly limited.