i think your neighbor is messing with you

ken

Photograph please.

btw

where are you..

whats your soil

whats your watering regimen

what if any fert??

flower color is genetic.. some change colors.. based on genetics ..

other than that.. they do NOT change colors gratuitously .. except for EXTREME soil issues ... have you ever had your soil tested??

i am still wondering about the neighbor .. lol ..

ken

CLB1995, I had this happen with peonies and nobody believed me either! For several years, one was pink and one was white. Then one year and every year thereafter, both were white.

Nobody moved them, I did not get confused, etc. The colors were different.

Happened to me too with an Echinacea Tomato Soup. After being overwintered in my basement , the whole plant bloomed like an ordinary E.purpurea.

Do you know the varieties of the dahlia and the clematis? And do you have pictures of them this year? It's always possible that there was a 3rd clematis in one of the pots,
the pink and purple ones died, but the white one survived. With the dahlia, how many white blooms were there...a lot, or just a few. And is it supposed to be a pale pink dahlia, or a bright one? As to why the dahlia looks dead...we don't know where you are...could be the heat just fried it.

Not sure about the dahlia, but clematis are notorious for changing colors according to growing conditions. Heat and sun in particular can cause the flowers to bleach even before they've opened, and so can too much shade in some varieties.

I planted 1 jackmanii & 1 proteus (double pink flowers) clematis and you can see two purcple bloomsand the rest are white. The white is okay in quite pretty so I let it go UNTIL I planted a new dimension dahlia (pink & yellow) in front of this spring. Have not had the soil tested. I live in planting zone 7 along the coast. If you notice at the bottom there is a pink & white columbine & some verbena and the colors are okay but I move the columbine since it looked like it got a rust disease on the leaves so I cut it all back and put it in a pot and it grew back okay. There are mums growing in the front and they do not have rust.

This discussion needs some clarification. With only a couple of exceptions (hydrangeas being primary), flowers do not change color in response to soil conditions. They can change in response to light levels but the change will be slight - a darker, often more intense hue in less light or a faded or washed out color of the original in strong light. Change of color can also be associated with the age of the flower and sometimes in response to the season with a change in the pigments and chloroplasts in response to day length and temperatures. But again, subtle color changes overtime rather than a complete color change from one season to the next.

A complete color change - from purple to white, for example - is far less common and is typically associated with a hybrid form reverting back to a species or parent. A similar thing can occur with graft failure. Since clematis are not grafted, if this is a real occurrence, it would be a hybrid reversion. But.......I've been growing clematis of all kinds for years, including with a commercial grower, and I've never seen a clematis revert. Not saying it can't happen, just not a very likely thing.

FWIW, most of the large flowered hybrids are of languinosa parentage, regardless of how remote :-) C. languinosa is variable in color but of the blue/lavender persuasion, not white. Any reversion would be back to the dominant color genes.

I suspect your plants were just mislabeled - an extremely common occurrence and far more likely than any sort of color change. And fwiw, neither of those clematis resemble Jackmanii in any form so even less chance of a color change due to reversion of that plant.

That is clearly a type II large flowered hybrid.
Looks like Miss Bateman.

The one on the right is Proteus, doubles don't always double and that color is correct, it isn't true carnation pink.

Here is a link that might be useful: Miss Bateman

Look how different the shape of the blooms is on Jackmanii and they are semi nodding too so they don't sit flat to the vine like your white ones do.

Here is a link that might be useful: Jackmanii

Actually, a plant can change color by other mutations than only by reversion. It is rather common with chrysanthemums . All colours in Murillo Tulips are mutants originating from the same bulb(and there are many of them.). Many garden cultivars are the result of mosaicism. Not only it can change the color, but also flower shape(Clematis Multiblue is a mutation of The President), height of the stems and other. Chrysanthemum Mey-kyo, Bronze Elegance, Julia and Nantyderry sunshine (4 totally different colours) are mutants of the same plant(either direct or through others)

I google Miss Bateman and I would say that's it BUT here's the problem, both the jackmani & proteus where in bloom when I bought them. Jackmani was purple and had many blooms and the proteus just had a couple of the double pretty pink quite large flowers. The one to the right of the picture looks like the jackmani but I had planted it on the left. Okay maybe you say it grow over that way but I check the vines and they are correct. So maybe there was 2 vines in the pot when I bought the jacmani and the jackmani maybe died? Soooooooooo why did the dahlia have all white flowers? Weird!

You guys know way more then I ever will about flowers so thanks for your input. Just figure someone would tell me to add lime or something. At first I was disappointed when I saw the white flowers since at my old house I had a beautiful jacmani growing on my light post. BUT this white clematis ended up being a jaw dropping show piece for my neighbors in our 55+ community. No one had ever seen anything like it! Will definitely keep it, no matter how it ended up being there!

For those, who just keep on writing that the plants do not change colours , some pictures:

Fresh open inflorescence of a pink Achillea plant

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A pink flower on brown Bronze Elegans Chrysanthemum

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Pink Flower on Purleigh White:
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I had also pink flowers on Chrysanthemum Nantyderry Sunshine(yellow), which itself is a mutation on Bronze Elegans.

Above photos not at all the same situation as that described by the OP. Achillea flowers typically go through a range of colors from bud to spent flower - part of the aging process. And color reversions on hybrids mums also not uncommon (and they also go through an aging flower color change, especially white and pale pink forms).

But to have a plant change color entirely from a dark purple to white from one year to the next, not to mention producing both a flower and leaf shape inconsistant with the supposedly labeled plant........very uncommon - virtually unheard of.

Yes, I know Chrysanthemums go through color changes as the flower ages, I have dozens of varieties. Here I'm talking about fresh flowers, not aged or frozen. Nantyderry sunshine will not age to intense pink-violet, nor will Bronze Elegans.

It is actually 'heard of' as several people reported it here on this forum and other fora. It is just the mechanism behind it that is not found/explained. I was sceptical too untill it happened to me. I bought a very big pot of a red Echinacea (do not remember whether it was Hot Summer or Tomato Soup). It was late in the season so I decided to overwinter it in my basement. As there was only one plant there was no possibility for confusion. Next summer the whole big plant was blooming in a colour of an ordinary E.purpurea. And it was NOT a seedling inside another plant. The whole big plant changed colour of the flowers, the rest of the plant(foliage , habit) did not change. I have also read reports from other countries , that people were experiencing it with Echinaceas.

Without evidence to the contrary, I'm sticking to my original suggestion that there was a hitchhiker in the clematis pot, and that's the one that survived.
Now, as for the dahlia...did you ever see it bloom pink? If not, entirely possible you have a mislabeled tuber. But if it bloomed pink last year, I can attest to the fact that dahlia blossoms on a single plant can be variable. The photos I've looked at of 'new dimension' show white on many of them...it's entirely possible that your blooms had a lot of white, very pale pink and yellow, and that the sun bleached the color out. Or could just be that the particular tuber you planted bleaches out easily in the heat. Weather plays a role in the intensity of the colors of many dahlias.

There is no way that a Jackmanii Clematis changed to Miss Bateman.

The shape of the blooms and the leaves are totally different.

Simply impossible.

The one on the right is not Jackmanii either.

There could have been blooming Jackmaniis in the pots but to have two with two planted in the pot with the same one dying off is a very slim chance....

The explanation for the echinacea is not hard to understand. The recent colored hybrids all have E. purpurea in their parentage, together with several other native species. And it's been pretty well-established that many of these are not necessarily stable hybrids and various cultivars have experienced all manner of uncommon or unnatural growth. The plant just reverted. Reversion from hybrid to one of the parent species is not an uncommon occurrence in horticulture.