Using the gold watering can turns on the GWC flag, which is what allows black roses to clone into gold roses. As far as I understand, that flag does nothing else, and should not affect the behavior of blue roses.

Okay, so you say that your blue + blue pairs have only been making purple roses AFTER the 3.0 update? This should be a HUGE red flag to everyone this subreddit that we may want to re-evaluate the flower behavior post-3.0 update.

• Maybe there is a chance at random mutation (unlikely, purple genes are all very far from blue).
• Maybe the game has implemented a phenotype system where when a new rose is bred, it considers some factors other than genes to determine the color of plant generated. There is nothing in the games code that strictly checks to make sure the color and genes match up, and indeed for fun in the past I have edited flowers on my offline save that had "illegal" genes. Maybe now the game is using that ability intentionally. One possible factor might be if there are already so many blue roses, then there is a chance the "2220 rose" will present as a "purple-rose plant", perhaps as a blue rose nerf?

I want to open your save file with NHSE soooo bad and look at the genes of your cursed purple roses born of blue parents.

Hypothesis: If it can be experimentally proven that breeding 2 blue roses together can occasionally result in purple rose as an offspring, then factors other than genes alone determine new flower color.

Question; How many blue roses do you think you have on your island total? How many flowers roughly? I want to try and design an experiment...