Well, here we go again with the surprises.
This year, I've expanded on last year's "Green Wall" to shade my apartment balcony from the afternoon sun and obscure my view of the neighbor's balcony full of clutter. I've planted a variety of different types of morning glory vines, hoping to get a good assortment of colors and foliage. One of the varieties that I grabbed off the seed rack this year was "Pearly Gates", figuring that I'd add some all-white flowers into the mix. It's been doing pretty well in the planter, and I was pleased to see last night that it was already producing buds. Then I noticed: the bud of the first bloom, set to open this morning, wasn't white, but pigmented. I decided to keep a close eye on it, to see what came of it. This morning, I was greeted by something that is decidedly NOT anything like the picture on the seed packet, but a deep purple flower with a dark purple star and a white throat. It looks a lot like the Star of Yelta vines that I grew last year.
I double-checked my sprout ID list, and although I did plant some Stars of Yelta this year as well, they were nowhere near the Pearly Gates in the sprouting trays, so I doubt that I would have mixed them up in the labeling process. All of my Yelta seeds are dark and round, while the seeds for Pearly Gates were dark and pointed, so that's another point of difference that I probably would have noticed while working. I suppose that I may have gotten yet another mis-labeled seed packet, but after striking out three times last year with the Flying Saucers fiasco, I have a hard time believing that I could be so unlucky that it could have happened again with a different type of seed, from a different producer.
The seeds in question are from American Seed, and as noted above, are black in color, with a pointed shape.
The vines are smooth, with heart-shaped leaves that are all one color.
Whatever these turn out to be, they're growing very enthusiastically, so it looks like I'm going to have a whole lot of them.
