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I've seen many people in one of my local forums say that their purple basil turned green a while after planting. There were no proper conclusions to this problem, so could someone please explain?

In my own experience, I planted a purple basil from seed. It started with purple leaves until it was medium sized, and then its leaves started to turn green.

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I do not have personal experience with this, but based on some discussion here it looks like the hybrids that generate purple basil can at times be unstable and revert to the traditional green basil.

The plant's hybrid parentage may cause its genetic instability when grown from seed; leaf color often varies from plant to plant and large numbers of pure green plants maybe be produced.

Another possibility mentioned on that page is that they will sometimes revert if they do not get enough sun.

Finally from here there is at least one type of basil that starts out purple and turns green as it matures: African Blue Basil.

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