CULT: turning white

Hi All!
Another question from this novice:  What's the real truth behind this phenomenon--TB varieties that (allegedly) revert to white after a few years?  I have never witnessed it myself, but the subject came up in recent discussion with some gardening friends, so I offered to bring the question to you, my panel of iris experts.  If I understand the iris' process of vegetative reproduction correctly, it doesn't make sense to me--how could any increase off a mother rhizome be genetically different?  Must be that the color is expressed differently, which I suppose has to do with cultural requirements and maybe some trace mineral being depleted in the soil????
 
Either that or it's all a hoax, perpetuated by the Burgermeister Meisterburger, who hates color and sends his police out with a bag of white rhizomes to uproot all the colorful ones and replant them with plain white. . .
 
Mary Blatz
Skaneateles, NY (near Syracuse)  USDA Zone 5
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