What were the two flower colors Mendel observed in his pea plants?

The two flower colors Mendel observed in his pea plants were purple and white.

Mendel selected garden peas because they offered clear, contrasting traits and could be self-pollinated or cross-pollinated by hand. In flower color, he crossed true-breeding purple-flowered plants with true-breeding white-flowered plants. The first-generation offspring all had purple flowers, showing that purple was dominant in this cross.

When those hybrid plants self-pollinated, white flowers reappeared in the next generation. The observed purple-to-white pattern was approximately 3:1, helping Mendel infer that hereditary factors were passed on as separate units rather than blending permanently. Those factors are now understood as alleles of a gene.

Some sources describe the color as violet rather than purple, reflecting translation and botanical wording. That is the same canonical contrast for this quiz. The flower-color experiment was one of seven paired characteristics Mendel studied, alongside seed shape, seed color, pod color, pod shape, flower position, and plant height.