A few years ago I planted a purple chrysanthemum in my yard. The plant grew to gigantic size. I ended up dividing it the following spring and to my surprise some of the resulting plants ended up yellow -- others, like the original plant were purple.

Over the years, I've divided these plants and get the same result. I've never seen an explanation for this color variation and was wondering if someone had ever seen this? (I can't find any reference on Google, which in itself amazes me).

As background, the soil doesn't seem to matter. I normally plant things in odd numbers and some of these clones will be yellow, while ones right next to the yellow one will be purple. This year, I even have one that is mostly yellow with a couple of purple flowers now growing (single plant) (picture below). The food and cultural care (feeding, water, etc) are the same. As already noted, the soil is the same too (so it isn't like Hydrangea, where you can turn them from Blue to Red by simply adding lyme to the soil.

What's really strange is that the leaf structure and shape seems to change too, depending on the color. You'd never guess that they come from the same parent.



Any ideas?

Thanks Morph. That's the thing. Normally it is all one color. This is the first time where I see the two colors in a single plant.

Sorry, boards are slow, so I'm reading old posts while I eat lunch. I have a chrysanthemum that started off as a decoration at an office holiday party 3 or 4 years ago. After the party, I took some home and stuck some in the garden and some in planters. One of the plants I put in my garden was purple. The following year, it came back purple. The next year it came back mostly purple, but had a couple of stems with yellow flowers as well. The next year it bloomed with purple, yellow and some white flowers! The ones that started off as all burgundy or all yellow or white, have stayed true to their original colors, but that something genetic is going on with that purple guy. Very interesting.