Green Hydrangeas, Where Do They Come From?

Some people love the uniqueness of green hydrangeas and some wonder why their bright blue blooms fade away to ugly green. Everyone is different. But if you wonder where green blooms come from – they are seldom found in nurseries – the answer is they come from blue blooms, and sometimes from late in the season white-flowering plants (Blushing Bride).

The Limelight hydrangea can also have green flowers, especially in early stages of growth. It’s flower is elongated in shape so it is different than the blue macrophylla, big leaf hydrangea, I’m writing about here.

Getting Photos Throughout the Season

The best opportunity I had to get photos of the seasonal color changes in blue hydrangea flowers was back in 2008-2010. I lived in a duplex in New Hampshire and the yard contained a few established blue hydrangea shrubs.

Unfortunately I didn’t have a smartphone back then and photos had to be taken with my camera and uploaded, edited and transferred to a blog to share. I was very unfamiliar with that process so I took a lot of pictures that are somewhere. Instead I must share the photos I took while living in my own house years later. I had one blue flowering plant and not many flowers, but still I managed to capture some of the blue to green flower color changes.

The macrophylla, rounded flowering blue hydrangea, will fade in ways that are unpredictable. Sometimes the green color is very pronounced and sometimes the blue turns to shades of pink and lavender.

The pretty pale green of the flowers below is more uniform on the Blushing Bride. This shrub had big solid white flowers that faded to this pretty green.

The soil alkalinity may have something to do with how the blooms change color. I’m not sure about this. In New Hampshire my soil was naturally acidic so the flowers grew bright blue. If the soil is more alkaline the flowers will be pink. I’ve never grown a pink flowering hydrangea so I’m not sure what color they fade to.

Now I am growing a hydrangea in my Florida yard. It’s my first time trying to grow hydrangeas in Florida and you can see my post here.