Q: Have you ever heard of crape myrtles changing color, i.e. from white to lavender or from lavender to white. This has come up, and I’ve noticed several crape Myrtle where it looks like someone planted white and lavender in the same hole. It is caused by someone planting more than one seed in the pot?

A: The color change in the flower after it is spent is common on many plants. Finding different colors is rare but there are some plants produce flowers that start out one color and change to another vivid color such as those flowers found on Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. However, I believe the different colors you are referring to on crape Myrtle are the result of two different cultivars being planted together and that does not occur often.

The color of the bloom often does change colors once the flower fades. Sometimes more than one type of crape myrtle is planted together too and you will see various colors of blooms. Planting multiple shrubs together can easily occur especially when you notice that crape myrtles naturally grow as multi-stemmed shrubs.

Generally, crape Myrtle shrubs are propagated in nurseries by cuttings because seed propagation takes too long. Therefore, the mixing of two colors would probably be done purposely, which would be a time consuming process for large scale nurseries. Regarding purchasing a plant with only one stem – this plant naturally grows with multiple stems. The University of Florida recommends you keep the number of stems from 3-5 and you will need to work hard to keep the stem numbers that small. Crape Myrtle will put out many more stems than 5 if permitted. We suggest you trim the suckers to limit the stem structure – this will take some vigilance on your part.

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