Odd Fuchsia

I have noticed an anomaly on a fuchsia plant in onre of my containers. It has two types of flowers on one flowering stem. Anyone seen this before?

 

Never! What do you plan to do with it?

 

Hi, Fran - yes, a friend of mine in Hatfield sent me a photo of hers - exactly the same thing! Odd, isn't it. So - what ARE you going to do, if anything?

 

Odly - I took a close look at a couple of others of the same variety and they all have stems showing what should be the purple inner - but with the odd stem with this lighter cerise colour and different more open shape. I have never seen this before. Yet these fuschias are a year or two old - one much older. If they were on different stems - it could be one of the crosses showing - but these flowers are on the same stem.

I wonder if it would be worth contacting the Fuchsia society and perhaps sending them a stem?? What do you think

 

Hi Fran,The following is from George Bartlett's Fuchsia book.
Occasionally plants do rather strange things & produce branches which exhibit flowers which are different ,or foliage which is a variation from the norm.This phenomenon is known as "Sporting" & can occur in any genus of plant.It is strange that occasionally plants of the same cultivar will produce sports in many widespread parts of the country in the same season.When this happens theconfusing situation arises of similar sports being introduced with different names.
If you should be fortunate enough to discover that one of your plants is throwing a sport you should first determine that there is sufficient variation from the norm to make it worth saving .To save the sport, cuttings must be taken from the branch which is producing the variation, in the hope that when each of these cuttings reaches maturity it will still be exhibiting the new variation ,It is possible that the new plant will revert to its original coloured leaf or flower,so a lengthy trial period is essential to ensure that the variation has been fixed.
(i knew what you meant but this guy explains it well,hope it helps)

 

Good gracious - I never knew that. I knew about sports from seed, but not on the same plant.

Thank you very much - I will see if I can take cuttings from stems that have done this and see what happens.

 

Cheers Fran,BTW its a very good book!

 

Thanks I will keep my eye out for it when I got to my local centre.