When purple is white
Several times over the years that these posts have been appearing I’ve pointed out that purple flowers seem more disposed than those of other colors to produce naturally occurring white variants. That was clearly the case with some spiderworts (Tradescantia spp.) that caught my attention at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on March 14th. You can see residual traces of purple in those flowers.
Two years ago you saw a largely white variant of a bluebonnet. (Most bluebonnets strike me as purple rather than blue.)
© 2018 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
I’ve not yet added spiderwort to my little collection of white variants, but when I do, I hope I can achieve the kind of clarity you have here. It’s a beautiful photo, and the faintly purple hairs are a delightful complement.
I’ll be interested to see what kind of images I have when I get home. It’s been three days of wind: first north, then south, and always at least 20 mph. Thank goodness there were some interesting rocks lying around.
shoreacres
March 25, 2018 at 5:42 AM
This photo pleased me, too. I’ve found spiderwort flowers hard to photograph because they grow in clusters, not all parts of which can be easily brought into focus at the same time.
Those winds visited Austin, too. The main (and almost only) thing I photographed last week were turtles, unaffected as they were by the wind. It sounds as if rocks provided the same immobility for you.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 9:57 AM
Exceptional macro of this find. Are white spiderworts a rarity?
MichaelStephenWills
March 25, 2018 at 6:00 AM
Thanks. I’ve haven’t tried to quantify the rarity of white spiderworts. Some years I’ve noticed none, but that may be a consequence of how often and where I went out. All I can say is that every so often I come across a few.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 10:00 AM
I have purple spiderworts with an occasional white one popping up. But the color change I’ve seen most often is with flowers that start out white and then turn pink from their second blooming onwards.
lynnwiles
March 25, 2018 at 6:56 AM
I’ve never seen a white spiderwort change to the typical purple. The wildflower I most often see change from white to pink is the rain-lily:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/a-particularly-graceful-rain-lily/
Do you recall what kinds of flowers you’ve seen start out white and then turn pink from their second blooming onwards?
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 10:13 AM
Beautiful blossoms! I also love to see the white variants and there are several here that do that.
montucky
March 25, 2018 at 9:34 AM
Which kinds of wildflowers in your area have white variants?
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 10:14 AM
Off the top of my head I can remember Shooting Stars and Harebells, but my memory isn’t fully awake yet this morning.
montucky
March 25, 2018 at 10:30 AM
Okay, we’ll give you a morning dispensation.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 10:36 AM
I enjoyed this study on purple and white, Steve, and your photos, both here and of the bluebonnet, are a joy.
Jet Eliot
March 25, 2018 at 9:57 AM
That’s always good to hear. Joy and Jet both start with a J and have two more letters.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 10:17 AM
Very nice! I did not realize there were white varieties!
Reed Andariese
March 25, 2018 at 10:04 AM
When I got interested in native plants here in 1999, spiderworts were among the first white variants of purple flowers I became aware of.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 10:20 AM
The wild petunia was another:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/when-isnt-violet-violet/
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 10:23 AM
Soon we’ll have trillium in the woods, often in big swaths, which are almost always white, but occasionally you see really nice purplish-pink ones.
Robert Parker
March 25, 2018 at 10:41 AM
That’s a good example in the opposite direction, where white is the norm and purplish-pink is the exception. I wonder whether the storms you’ve been having in the Northeast will delay your trilliums.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 11:05 AM
I think you’re right. Snowdrops are out in the parks, but there’s still snow on the ground in the woods at home.
Robert Parker
March 25, 2018 at 11:16 AM
Any delay may whet your floral appetite and make the eventual trilliums thrilliums.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 3:47 PM
…and speaking of color variations, there are a few pink bluebonnets scattered amongst the blue at the Lockhart State Park this season.
esther wilson
March 25, 2018 at 10:46 AM
Thanks for letting us know about those. I found this article about pink bluebonnets:
https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/flowers/bluebonnet/pinkbluebonnet.html
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 11:09 AM
Oh! PURPLE bluebonnets?! I like them because I think that they are so blue, like our native lupines.
tonytomeo
March 25, 2018 at 11:58 AM
Over the years of this blog I’ve carried on an intermittent discussion about how people identify a given color. One factor is that there are individual differences in the cones in people’s eyes. Another factor is that each language has only a small number of common words to identify an infinite number of colors. Different languages divide up the visible spectrum differently.
A bluebonnet typically strikes me as more purple than blue, while other people call the same color blue.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 3:28 PM
I am told the same about agapanthus and jacaranda, in regard to the color.
When I grew rhododendrons, there were so many corny names for colors that I refused to use. I knew red, pink, purple, white, yellow, orange and so on; just the basics. Garnet was brownish red. Coral . . . I still do not know what that is. I could deal with salmon, but not buff. There were just too many colors to keep track of. Then, I was constantly reminded that white (which happens to be my favorite color) is not a color. So what!? If buff is a color, then white can be too. Technically, pink is not a color either, but a hue of red. Why doesn’t a hue of blue or yellow have a name. Brown is a tint of orange, but it has a name too. I don’t get it.
tonytomeo
March 25, 2018 at 8:21 PM
Oh my! I sent that before correcting the punctuation. Anyway, color is a trip. I will still stick with the basics. I do not care what white is; an absence of color or all colors combined. It is still my favorite. I can see neither infrared nor ultraviolet, so they do not concern me except in regard to what pollinators can see in flowers. By the way, do you happen to know what colors dogs can see?
tonytomeo
March 25, 2018 at 8:26 PM
Sorry, I don’t know anything about canine vision.
Color is indeed a trip. Physicists and linguists have studied it from their respective viewpoints. In English, blue is a more basic color word than purple, and that seems to account at least in part for the various wildflowers that ended up with blue in their names even though I see them as purple or violet.
Physicists consider white a mixture of all colors, but in common parlance white will always be a color, as will black. Curiously, the English words black and blank are etymologically related.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 11:04 PM
Did you happen to see my naughty article about white flowers? Some might find it to be offensive. I will send the link.
https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/09/21/white-supremacy/
tonytomeo
March 25, 2018 at 11:07 PM
I didn’t but I have now.
Steve Schwartzman
March 26, 2018 at 8:18 AM
Some hues of blue do have names, for example sky blue, azure, and aquamarine. Russian has no single word for blue; instead it uses two unrelated words, one for what English would describe as light blue or sky blue, and the other for dark blue or navy blue.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 11:08 PM
Oh, those blues would be weirder than red and pink. I mean, I can see how sky blue would be comparable to pink, but is Navy blue comparable to red? That just makes no sense. In English, we could eliminate pink if necessary.
tonytomeo
March 25, 2018 at 11:10 PM
As you said: color is a trip.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 11:54 PM
Beautiful !!!!
gwenniesgardenworld
March 25, 2018 at 12:08 PM
Agreed.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 3:28 PM
That is a lovely image, so pure with that delicate fringe of soft purple, and such a dear and un-demanding flower! I still remember with clarity the iron swing set in my parent’s yard, the iron basketball-goal post tucked past that in a corner, and if a ‘shot’ went awol, we often foraged in the spiderworts to retrieve the ball!
I can picture the sparkles of dew and can almost feel that organic softness of the plant, and oh, the purity of the colored ones, yet white would be equally lovely in the shade…. What a perfect image to start my journey backwards here to see what I’ve missed!
I did see headlines, however, about the problems in Austin – so sorry… sometimes it’s nice to be blissfully disconnected from the world news, though it comes at a cost of being disconnected from my favorite wp bloggers!
Playamart - Zeebra Designs
March 25, 2018 at 12:19 PM
Welcome back. I do hope your journey back through recent posts will be a pleasant one.
You seem to be the only person in the world who ever described a flower (or anything else) as dear and un-demanding. When I did a search for that exact phrase, both with and without the hyphen, Google returned not a single hit. You’re probably also among the very few people who have searched for a basketball in a group of spiderworts.
I’ve been surprised that people in faraway parts of the world have heard about the bombings in Austin. The latest reports say that in a 25-minute recording the bomber left on his cell phone, he described himself as a psychopath.
All the political wrangling in the United States wears me out and depresses me. You have an advantage in being cut off from a lot of that.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 3:38 PM
it’s always a treat to have unhurried time while perusing your posts; your feedback is always of interest. you made me laugh about my search for the basketball, but for some reason those spiderworts left a strong imprint. i’m so glad that my choice of words sent you on a seek-and-find mission! thanks for sharing that info!
i’ve been visiting w/my son via internet and got side tracked, and now it’s time to resume rolling paint on the walls of the apt.. tomorrow i’ll return the keys to the owner, and by tomorrow night will be back in poza honda, where world events might as well be happening on another planet… it’s nice to be surrounded by nature, however, and to sometimes see a carl-sagan sky overhead!
Playamart - Zeebra Designs
March 25, 2018 at 4:43 PM
I’m often alert to unique expressions and try to give people credit for them, like you with “dear and un-demanding.”
Those clear night skies you mentioned are another fringe benefit of spending time in relative isolation. You’ve reminded me that when I revisited Honduras in the 1970s I took a star guide with me so I could identify constellations too far south to be visible from the United States.
Happy paint-rolling.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 10:54 PM
I wonder if phlox fits in that category of pink/white variants? The spiderwort genetics sound interesting.
Lavinia Ross
March 25, 2018 at 12:59 PM
You make a good point that phlox comes in many colors. In fact that variety is part of phlox’s appeal to appeal.
Spiderwort strikes me as a different kind of variation: there’s a strongly dominant color or range of similar colors, in this case purple/violet, along with a relatively tiny number of white spiderworts. With phlox, none of the colors seems to dominate, and all are common.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 3:43 PM
Beautiful flower portrait!!
norasphotos4u
March 25, 2018 at 8:11 PM
Thanks. I agree that this portrait is a success.
Steve Schwartzman
March 25, 2018 at 10:54 PM
Love the hint of purple … wonderful image Steve
Julie@frogpondfarm
March 30, 2018 at 2:35 PM
Some things are better hinted at than revealed.
Steve Schwartzman
March 30, 2018 at 3:32 PM
Agreed 😃
Julie@frogpondfarm
March 30, 2018 at 7:18 PM
Winston Churchill is supposed to have said: “A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.”
Steve Schwartzman
March 30, 2018 at 9:20 PM
I always liked Winston Churchill 😊
Julie@frogpondfarm
March 31, 2018 at 4:28 AM
Many websites attribute that quotation to Churchill but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t the originator. I’ve traced the quotation as far back as 1921, but even then the originator wasn’t named.
Steve Schwartzman
March 31, 2018 at 10:15 AM
That’s a gorgeous photograph, and an interesting observation.
bluebrightly
April 10, 2018 at 1:25 PM
You understand why I’m so happy with this photograph. I keep one foot in the world of art photography, so to speak.
Steve Schwartzman
April 10, 2018 at 8:34 PM
[…] a recent post you saw a pretty white variant of a spiderwort, a wildflower that is normally purple or magenta or violet. Another purplish wildflower that […]
Another white variant | Portraits of Wildflowers
April 17, 2018 at 4:53 AM
I imagine that is the case in some areas, as well. For example, one town I know of “specializes” in white, non-albino squirrels, while another town might frequently see black squirrels. I have never seen white spiderwort here. What a find! It is beautiful, and beautifully photographed.
melissabluefineart
April 18, 2018 at 9:05 AM
I’ve lost the referent of your first sentence.
Your mention of white squirrels that aren’t albinos reminds me of one I used to see on our property:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/white-squirrel-time-again/
It hasn’t put in an appearance for some time now, so it probably isn’t still alive.
Thanks for picking up on the quality of the photography in this post.
Steve Schwartzman
April 18, 2018 at 9:12 AM
These are much whiter than the ones we have in our yard. Although they appear white the color is actually a very pale blue with dark blue lines.
Steve Gingold
May 12, 2019 at 6:42 AM
These may have been the whitest spiderworts I ever saw. I imagine the norm for “white” spiderworts is more like the way you describe yours.
Steve Schwartzman
May 12, 2019 at 7:07 AM