Q: I am looking for a purple and black desert roses. Do you have any? Are Adenium the same as the desert rose??? – Sylvia
A: The Black adenium is a myth. There are not true black adeniums no matter what images people show or send you. Just like a true black rose the images are altered to look black. In reality the flower is a dark rich red. In real life they do not look black but dark dark red.
There are flower that are magenta/violet /purple in color. If you are looking for a rich grape purple then you may be disappointed. The purples are closer to violet (medium purple). The closest ones we have seen to purple are purple rain, king violet and Sapchareng. We have a couple Violet monkong ready to bloom that seems like they will produce a purple/violet color but I will need to wait a couple of weeks.
Whenever you see images look at them. If the image is dark (see the background) or the color fuzzy then be careful because is may be an altered images to look better then the actual adenium flower. Thailand, India and China are famous for selling adenium plants using altered pictures. We we get a shipment of plants from Thailand we put a notice that until we see the actual flower that the flower type is NOT PROVEN. If we receive 50 plants of one flower type of desert rose we wait to see 3..4 of them to bloom before posting the true images. Or order usually consist of 20 or more different flower types of adenium plants per order. Yes, sometimes the image from Thailand are accurate but we see differences in about 25 to 37% of the images when compared to the real flowers. Even in the lots there will be variations.
Collectors of adenium plants in the US think this is a put-on to state NOT -PROVEN on the website because USA collectors/buyers are spoiled by most nurseries (Ebay is an except – many dis-honest images) in the USA of showing the correct images. We haev purchased adeniums from 5 different major growers in Thailand and they are all the same -inaccurate images and plant sizes.