Blue forget-me-nots seem to be coming back pink?

Hi everyone

Two years ago I bought several Myosotis Mon Amie Blue plants. I love them - they flowered several times a year, self-seeded freely and the plants tended to flower the same year rather than being biennial.

This year a couple of plants have grown back and their flowers are coming out... pink! I could imagine pink plants reverting back to blue, but I wasn't expecting blue-flowering plants to have pink-flowering offspring. I'm going to buy some new ones because I don't like pink forget-me-nots. Do you know if this colour-changing happens a lot? Don't want to shell out for new plants only to have the same problem again.

Thanks

 

Think it happens when they self-seed. Happily I quite like them like that.

 

It happens in my garden too. It's genetic, like people with different colour hair or eyes etc, a child can have different colour to its parents. If the plants have a gene for pink colouring it will show up eventually in subsequent generations.

 

Thanks so much @Michael Hewett & @Dovefromabove, that's good to know. I guess I'll just buy some new ones and hope they don't have pink genes! Large clumps of blue forget me nots are so pretty

 

I think the only way to guarantee you’ll not get pink ones is to take your plants up after flowering and replant with fresh plants grown from named seed each year.

 

Most of my self seeded ones still come back blue, but there are always a few pink ones.

 

We seem to find that all our forget me nots are blue (all self seeded around the garden) but as they get towards the end of flowering they turn pink but not at the start.

 

Some of my self-sown ones open up pink and turn blue later, a bit like pulmonaria (both are in the borage family).

 

I was just about to say the same thing. Some of the fading flowers on our blue plants are looking pink at the moment but not as pink as the true pink forget me not.

In our local woods we have mostly blue ones but also the odd pink or white clump. The same happens with the woodland bluebells and I've seen some white dog violets in amongst the normal purple ones.

 

My self sown forget me nots do the same. They were in the garden when I moved here, I lift seedlings and put them where I want them, in the top of pots of bulbs etc. Mostly they have remained blue but this year there is a big plant in the veg. plot which has pink flowers.
The same thing happens with primroses, I have lots of the yellow wild primroses growing in my garden but every so often I have to dig out a horrible pink version which I dislike.

 

We only get the occasional pink flower, never a full clump or enough to disrupt the overall blueness (is that a word?). If I did get a full clump, I’d probably pull it up to try and reduce the pink gene pool

 

I have noticed this morning that some of my forget-me-nots are blue, some have pink and blue flowers on the same plant, and some are totally pink. They were all blue a few years ago.
I liked them when they were all blue but I also like them as they are now. It seems more natural to me somehow.