Selecting for Variegation — Plant One On Me — Ep 040

if it's one thing plant lovers lust after its variegation as in this monster deliciosa I'm here at Steve's leaves and I'll be talking with Darrin the operations manager on the benefits and challenges of variegation and actually how to select for variegation in your plants at home so tune in to this episode of plant one on me field trip editions so I'm here with Darren who is the operations manager at Steve's leaves and we're gonna go a little over variegation which I know is really popular among house plant enthusiasts now we have a couple different varieties here maybe you could take us through what each of the varieties are and maybe comment a little bit about what variegation means in plants yeah we actually have two plants here one of them is a marbled singhania and the other one is a marbled monstera deliciosa as far as marbling goes it is actually a mutation in plants it happens naturally but it usually reverts back out in the nature so it'll happen and then it'll revert back and become green again in the greenhouse and in your home you can actually keep it going but sometimes it does want to revert back to its natural state so you'll see this plant here it's got some variegated leaves on it but it's also got some solid green leaves on it and then it goes all the way to the other extreme where the leaves can go completely albino this is not good people love it yeah it's beautiful but the plant no longer has any chlorophyll in this end and it can no longer support itself also with variegated plants like this the green solid green leaves versus the variegated leaves is going to outgrow the variegated very quickly whenever something like this happens it's always best to get there as much green out of here as you possibly can and the same way with the white you want to get the white off here as soon as you can - even though it's pretty you can keep it for a little while but as soon as you see it keep going you know past three or four leaves you'll probably want to cut it off and get it back on track so is the white one zapping energy from its like brothers and sisters or what's happening there it is to an extent I mean it is taking some energy from the plant to continue to grow and it's not producing anything so without any chlorophyll in it it's actually just continuing to grow without giving back anything to the plan itself I have one exactly of the signo Neum how to fill them Alba Varig a time I think it's called but I must have missed it because I have two together and I looked at the one the other day and only has white leaves and they're very tiny and I'm like okay well this is the end of it because there isn't a green leaf so you know word to the wise you know you do they're very beautiful but you do want to have at least some green I would imagine on you and this is correctable I mean if you're going to write here you can actually see that right before this white there's a variegated leaf so if you were to cut this plant back right here it would actually put out a new growth that would continue on to be green and then door variegated so anytime this happens cut it back to the first leaf that is green and you can check the stem to the stem will show you that it's white on this side and it's green on this side so that row that comes from this node well either be solid green or variegated more than likely because I can see variegation right here the the leaf will come on out being very good and you'll sometimes see leaves that are split right down the middle half and half and that's again you can kind of predict what's going to happen by looking at the stems now the same thing with the when it goes all green like this you want to get this green out of here because like I said it's going to over grow this plant and if it overshadows the variegated growth it can actually it's not going to kill the plant the plant is just going to become a green plant and that's not what you paid for so what you do is you'd search this plant back to where you can find a variegated spot on the stem or the leaves and cut it back there and that next growth as long as you see it next to the node has some white or some variation in the stem it will go ahead and produce variegated foliage well when I think of the signal iums I mean they are very prolific they they are growers and I think we could actually see it from from this one it's just overflowing the monstera on the other hand is a very slow grower I find mine that are like you know unless I have like really good conditions which is a little bit more humidity you know you have some you know bright light but not totally direct it will start to like grow a little bit but it's it's a slow one you have to be patient with it yeah and depending on the stage of arrogation like this leaf you see does have green and as have white and it also has an O lapping white on the green which shades out some of the green these are two separate layers of cells in here so the bottom layer is green the top layer is white and that's what you're seeing that grayish green color in here but what happens is this plant is now inhibited by the amount of chlorophyll that it has and about how much energy it can produce so therefore they grow much slower when they're this way that's again the reason that the green roof can outgrow the variegated growth that much quicker but we want them all to be this pretty and everything so we have to just deal with the fact that they're gonna be slow and now it does this one require a little bit more light compared to a regular green version no actually a little more the more light on this white you're risking some burning interesting so that's not always the case with variegation in this case it I also noticed that my monster even my regular version is pretty sensitive to light I had one where it will go up right to the south-facing window because maybe it doesn't know any better and it will burn so I had to keep on pulling it away because it does grow incredibly fast and so it'll start to reach towards the light so I actually had to physically physically move it away but it's also a you know important to know I think that what you said is that in nature this mutation is doesn't benefit the plant so that's why we quickly see it disappear typically yeah is there a way to encourage mutation with it as a grower in the in the variegated varieties or do you just have to like sit and wait and say oh I hope there's gonna be something that splotches I've found several plants in here that are variegated it's usually when you're doing cuttings or rooting like begonia leaves as you were seeing but earlier the plants will come up with variegation but a lot of times it's not stable it grows out very quickly out of the five or six that I've dealt with in the last few months that I've found the variation wasn't stay at all I still have one that's possibly stable it's a variegated begonia but we'll see how that goes yeah there's also different kinds of variations I mean what we're dealing with here is is a more stable form of it the variation that you see in these kind of plants is more inherent its color variation which is what I'm talking about with the beginning yeah well thank you so much this is really helpful and I personally think that you know variegation is like so hot in the house plant market now that you know for people to say how can I get more variation this is just the next step that will at least help them and also inform them that it does actually you know can take a little bit of energy and it doesn't necessarily mean that it's gonna be the healthiest house plant button you could select for it actually in your house so that it that you have a happy medium where you aesthetically like it as well as the the plant is strong enough to be able to survive so thank you so much for all your knowledge Steve's leaves has been growing unique varieties of house plants for over 41 years you can check out all of his fancy foliage at Steve's leaves com hopefully that answered all your questions on variegation and got you more hooked on green and white leaves and of course if you love these episodes then don't forget to subscribe to the channel and follow along on instagram at homestead Brooklyn and on my website at homestead Brooklyn com ciao you

Channel: Summer Rayne Oakes

Views: 151,967

Rating: 4.9317617 out of 5

Keywords: Summer Rayne Oakes, green, houseplants, variegated Monstera, variegated Monstera deliciosa, Syngonium podophyllum, syngonium podophyllum variegatum, syngonium podophyllum care, Monstera care, Monstera deliciosa care, selecting for variegation in plants, variegated plants, variegated plant care, plant care, houseplant care, Steve's Leaves, Homestead Brooklyn, Plant One On Me

Id: oD1vngRhlvo

Length: 8min 33sec (513 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 16 2017