Telomers in the cells shorten as the cell ages. This is so for animals and humans as I know. But is this so for plants also? That's a very good question. I have never read or heard of anyone researching this, but I'd be surprised if no one has. One of the largest single differences between animals and flowering plants (& possibly sporulating ones, but I don't know enough plant physiology to know if it applies to them as well, and I'm speculating about this since I haven't taken a plant physiology course in 30 years & haven't ever studied plant cellular physiology in detail) is the way in which they age and are capable of reproducing. There's a big difference between a (flowering) plant's ability to reproduce itself asexually and a mammal's ability to do that. If I recall correctly that ability in mammals and many or most other veterbrate taxa is just about zero (identical twins excepted). Meanwhile among some cultivated plants there are cultivars that have been around for literally centuries and are still very widespread now. The Kurume hybrid azalea "coral bells" comes to my mind immediately. It's extremely widespread in parts of the USA (including the Northeast) and still very widely available in commerce right now, yet in Japan it's known as "", and it was bred all the way back in the 1600's, with no sign of its changing much or losing any of its growth characters! (It's growing on the property where I live now, ten miles north of Boston as I write this, but I'm very close to the northern edge of what it will tolerate. The winter here can be very brutal on its leaves.) If its telomeres functioned the way a mammal's telomeres did I can only think that by now it would no longer exist, yet it does, and it's constantly asexually propagated, and must be so millions of times per year (based upon the number of cuttings I took of it yearly at a small azalea production nursery back in the 1980's). How many times have own-root species rose clones been asexually propagated with no loss of vigor?

If it were a hybrid, I would understand different colored flowers (bracts) from seed, but not from cuttings. It must have something to do with the soil conditions and fertilizer is all I can think of. The parent plant was very neglected and probably growing in alkaline sand/lime whereas the cutting is in a mildly acidic peat-based potting mix and gets plenty of bougainvillea fertilizer. It is just so strange to see that much of a color change! I really wanted the vibrant orange not the washed out lavender and the parent plant has been removed, that is why I was trying to grow it from cuttings. I had never seen a bougainvillea quite that vibrant of an orange color. I think what I will do is go dig up some of the sand where the parent plant was and plant this cutting in that sand and then neglect it and see what happens.

I hope the mature blooms turn out to be what you want, but just as a precaution, you should know that garden centers are notorious for mixing up hydrangeas and plant tags. After three years of waiting for my very special vanilla strawberry blooms, I'm still getting lovely all-white blooms (with a faint hint of greenish highlight) and my Pinky Winky, bought at the same time but from a different place, is still blooming all white also. Don't know what that means--but at least the white blooms are attractive. Good luck. Kate

Thanks for the explanation Dar, I have never paid too much attention to flower color before as I usually only grew two different varieties most years, three one year and these were all well separated. This year I'm growing Insuk Wang Kong in the same location as my Italians but they're not supposed to cross, Uncle Steve's are pretty much isolated, as were the rice beans. All the others are growing together in the patch these I've bagged flowers as they were forming on the ones I need to save a few seeds from. Annette