Trumpet Blooms

Coloring


Brug Blog 12.2013


This month let's discuss how brugmansia, or Angel trumpets, color up. The flowers are so mystical, and the color of the bloom depends largely on outdoor temperatures and climate. Unlike so many other garden plants, brugmansia flowers depend largely on climate and factors such as humidity, rainfall, micronutrients, temperature and overall climatic conditions to produce a bloom flush that will have either a deeply colored, or pale flower set.

I have discussed this with other Growers of brugmansia. We all seem to agree. Those mitigating factors do determine bloom color. I'm going to use two or three from my own collection as examples.

First, let me introduce you to Peanut. Brugmansia Peanut was one of the first few I put in my collection. I fell in love with the medium sized tree, and the photos of Peanut at BGI confirmed that. The tightly skirted, fat double to triple blooms were all shown in mauvy pinks and pale creamy rose.

The first blooms I received on Peanut were very pale pink. I was delighted to finally see them, and snapped a few pictures. But even those blooms, within a couple of days, began to turn more of a light salmon tone. I waited for the next bloom-flush, and that time around every flower colored up peach right from the start. I was beginning to think it wasn't Peanut at all, and that somehow the Seller had mistakenly sent me the wrong Angel trumpet.

I wrote my closest friend in the Brugmansia community, and asked her opinion. She set me straight, and informed me that brugmansia do color up differently depending upon climate. One has to remember, Peanut was created in Germany, the great country that is famous for cool days and colder evenings. A perfect environment for a brugmansia, as long as there is no freeze.

Flush after flush, my Peanut was blooming more of a coral shade. As time went on, and I learned more about brugmansia, I resigned myself (happily) to the fact that this is just how the mysterious Angel works. given a different set of growing conditions, the plant flushes different colors of flowers.

I have come to love this fact. Here is an ornamental small tree that always mystifies. The blooms can be novel each time! I have noticed that my beloved Pink Dragon almost always colors up darker in cool weather as opposed to warm summer days. I have begun to look forward to that.

So last year, when I acquired Mandarin Twist. I was estatic about the deep orange blooms with the low calyx gripping the flower, a beauty to behold and one I must have. And this year he began to bloom for me, in August. The first bloom was a pale to medium shade of yellow, rich and evenly colored. Beautiful, but not the orange I had pined for. But I know from experience that young brugmansia often throw out blooms and colors that are different as they age. A young plant may not throw flowers that resemble photos taken from adult plants. My Mandarin Twist was just over a year old, so patience must prevail.

The next blooms were just over a month later, and sure enough, there appeared a creamy peach hue, mixed in with the yellow. A very pleasing color, but still not the orange that Ludger (Mandarin Twist's creator) had obtained. I held my breath and waited for the third bloom-set.

At the end of last month, Mandarin Twist threw me some very vibrant, yellow-orange blooms. Still not Ludger's twisted soda pop orange, but more orange indeed. And now so I wait on, and hope the next bloom cycles bring me the Orange Crush color. Hey, if not, I still have one of the most cheerful, waxy yellows around. I have brugmansia friends who are dying to get this color!

Brugmansia also color up in different shades from day to day. When the blooms first come out of the calyx, they are always a bright, lime green. No matter the end result, the flower that is still tightly wound and unopened is green. It colors up day to day, after green turning to white, and on the third and fourth day, the actual true color of the bloom will begin to appear. See a bloom begin and end Here.

I hope my little blog may have cleared up a few questions for you. Do not be surprised if your Angel Trumpet does not throw the exact color you saw in one of my or someone else's photos. It is the nature of this plant to be strange and unusual. And isn't that one of the main reasons we love brugmansia so?

Tags: Brugmansia seedpods, brugmansia seed pods, angel trumpet seeds, angel trumpet seedpods, growing angel trumpet seedpods, growing brugmansia seeds, when is a seed pod ripe, ripe angel trumpet seeds, registering brugmansia cultivars, unripe seed pods,

This entry was posted on November, 2013 and is filed under Brugmansia Blog.