Reversion

 Last summer I had beautiful impatiens. They have long been one of my favorite landscape flowers, perhaps because we have always lived amongst the trees and impatiens are one of a few flowering plants that will flower profusely with low light. 

This one of the two arrangements from last year. 

Impatiens are annuals, and even though they were sheltered from the cold, the plants died back. But, not before leaving a healthy crop of seeds to assure that there would be offspring to carry on their genes! The plants began growing this spring as soon as it warmed up and they are now producing flowers. Here is the other pot:

I can't find a picture of this pot from last year, but I know it had several colors of impatiens, and now all the blossoms I see are red. It seems to me that I recall having a similar experience many years ago when I had impatiens bloom in my garden from the previous year's seeds. 

I asked Google about my observations. Mr. A-I-nstein tells me, "Most commercially bought impatiens are hybrids (F1). While they produce seeds, those seeds rarely inherit the specialized color of the parent, instead, reverting to the original dominant color of the species (typically pink, white or red.)"

So I have a bonafide genetics experiment going on in my garden! 

$F_1$