If it is an Optimara, I would agree this is Cora. The leaves look correct and the flowers can be nearly all dark purple in the summer heat. The current blooms on mine are similar. In the cool of winter, the blooms can be nearly all white. Its very changeable!

The "thumbprints" will tend to go solid in the heat of summer. This includes Millennia which always went solid red for me. I would wait for cooler weather before settling on a color for something that might have white in it.

It doesn't bother every plant, just some of them.

OTOH, I've been puzzling over one that might be Trinidad (they said they'd brought back the original for a bit) or poss. Yellowstone. She is going to ask on the Optimara ID Facebook. The leaves on hers look somewhat different. Those do remind me of Cora when I had it but I'm never going to go around id'ing Optimaras based solely on leaves :)

Diana

not very clear pic, but that first closest flower with blurred color patches - that looks like thrips work.

I have had thrip damage previously. This is different. There is no damage to the petals except that they are discolored. I havent seen thrips for a month or so since the windows were closed and I disbudded about that long ago.

I am going to go check again though. Maybe they are hiding from me.

After a thorough check, I found one thrips on one AV. So thrips damage possible. May do something about. Probably wont.

Unless I decide to repel them from all AVs but one and hope it takes the brunt of the damage.

Certainly not going to disbud in the midst of a large flush of flowers.

Is there seriously no way to treat for thrips without damaging/removing blooms? One would think, after all these years of AV propagation, somebody would have figured something out.

double post

This post was edited by Lauraeli on Mon, Aug 11, 14 at 14:04

Thank you, TerriLou,
For your explanation.
I have one that was 70% white when I got it in the colder weather. Now in the hot summer, it is 60% to 70% purple. The plant is internally consistent, all the blossoms are the exact same color proportion. I like it either way. Joanne

This post was edited by fortyseven on Tue, Aug 12, 14 at 2:08