African Violets and Gesneriads: Are AV babies ALWAYS identical to parents?, 0 by donnerville

donnerville wrote:
Ok, this is probably a very dumb question, but I have a mysterious AV that I think I grew from a leaf (or was it a sucker?) of another plant that looks completely different.

In the photo, the parent plant is on the left. It is a Shimmering Sunshine that I purchased last year from a local nursery. The nursery’s AVs are supplied by Old Dominion AV Society. I potted up a sucker and also grew a few baby plants from a leaf. “Identical AV baby plants could be grown from leaves” was all I knew (only heard about it) about AVs. LOL .

I didn’t label any of them because I just thought I would recognize them when they started to bloom. I had only 2 AVs at the time and didn’t think there would be any confusion.

As you can see, the baby plant looks very much like the parent plant except for the flowers. The Shimmering Sunshine has semi-double bright fuchsia flowers with white edges, but the baby plant has very large white flowers with beautiful soft-green edges. If you look closely, you can see a hint of fuchsia at the center of the flowers. There are 6 flowers now, 3 single and 3 semi-double.

You are all experienced AV growers. Can you please tell me if it is possible for an AV baby to look different from the parent plant when propagated from leaves/suckers? I will post a few close-up pics.

Thank you very much.