hey everyone my name is memo this is my channel house planty goodness which essentially is a
place that i come to to geek out about my big passion which is tropical houseplants
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so there's going to be a lot of content that's coming on like this where
i talk a bit more about my plants i'm in my conservatory now otherwise as the hot house and
yeah let's dive into today's topic which is the point that i want to talk about today is chimeric
variegation so i don't know if anybody's ever heard of this before but chimeric irrigation is
the variegation that you get in a lot of the house plants that we would have in our care essentially
so for instance let's actually delve into before i go into anything else really let's dive into
what a chimera is so i don't know if anybody's kind of brushed up on their mythology but i can
give you a bit of an explanation a chimera was a mythological beast which had different parts
from different animals i think it had the body of a lion it had the tail of a scorpion it had wings
of an eagle i think so a chimera essentially is a being or um in this case i'll talk about plants
that are kind areas there's also chimerism in humans sometimes when you get people with two
different colored eyes not always but sometimes those humans are chimeras as well so they've got
um a second set of dna which is what's making that color in the eye being different but um when it
comes to chimeras a lot of the time in plants it tends to be the variegated plants so you can
imagine where the variegation is is one set of dna and the green part is the other part of the dna
and the point i want to talk about today is the fact that a lot of the times with chimeric
variants the variegation when you think it has reverted it hasn't and a really good example of
this would be the philodendron pink princess and i will actually show you mine in just a minute
so you can kind of see what i'm talking about but with chimeric variegation what you can sometimes
see is obviously we all know hopefully by this point that when you're looking for variegation
and when you think your plant has reverted you need to look at the stem this is highly true
for things like the variegated alba monstera where you can see the white stripe going down so even
if the leaf that's come out is relatively green it doesn't have a lot of irrigation if there's
a strong amount of irrigation in the stem that you can see then they're still likely that the
following leads will have some variegation now that's not always the case and it's not always
as clear there are certain plants and i'll grab one now actually so for instance i've got this
variegated hibiscus and i don't know whether or not it will come up on camera and i'll bring it
in a bit closer and hopefully you might be able to see the stems there you can't see any variation
in the stem the stem is just an average brown color so you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell
whether or not there's variegation still within that plant if you're starting to see some green
leaves and it happens a lot for instance with the philodendron pink princess and even though you can
see the pink stripe going up the side of the stem it's not always the case that when you stop seeing
variegated leaves coming through and you stop seeing the stem have the pink stripe that the
plant has reverted a lot of people will go in and they will just chop the plant
but that's not always the case and i'll show you now and that's the point i'm trying to make with
chineric variants the dna is still probably within the stem so if you hold it off for a bit and they
usually do say this a lot of the times with pink princesses if you can hold on on the kind of muddy
brown leaves that you'll get until the variegation comes back in you might still get that variegation
coming through because it might be on the inside of the stem essentially you might not be able
to see that variation in there but it's still within the dna of those cells because it is that
variant portion of the dna now the other thing that's interesting about variegation specifically
chimeric variation is especially when it comes to the thing plants like the pink princess that
have got a variegated color that isn't white or yellow which is what we're used to seeing
so if anybody's ever seen another video if they've got a pink princess and they cut the stem to maybe
um propagate a lot of people will say that it bleeds because it's got this really deep red sap
essentially so if you'd imagine if the sap of the plant is red and there's going to be a variegated
part of the leaf which would normally be white that variegated part will no longer be white
it would be white mixed with the red that you're seeing from the sap thus the pink so let me just
grab you and take you in a bit closer and you can actually see what i mean within my pink princess
so you can see here my pink princess and you can see that it doesn't have an awful lot of
irrigation it never really did to be fair but it did have some splashes of pink but the more
you went up on the plant the more it grew the more green it became so if i just show you the top part
of the plant now you might be able to see in that top part of the plant that most of the leaves were
green and it looked like it had fully reverted but it started showing in some variegations annoyingly
my first half moon even though it was a tiny leaf in terms of irrigation
happened once the move was happening so it got a bit battered and you can see the new leaf
doesn't look like it's got too much irrigation but my point i was trying to make is
normally somebody else would have probably cut off the plant at that point tried to propagate it take
it down to the last variegated part but you can see it then brought up some more variegation so
try to hold off if you can because the variegation could come back excellent so you were able to
see what i meant by the variegation and that is something to just be aware of that you should kind
of potentially sometimes with your plants leave them for a bit before you decide to chop back
entirely and also the other thing we've said this on previous videos the more green that
exists on the plant itself the more chance it has to photosynthesize and grow stronger
and faster so occasionally leaving the odd fully green leaf or non-variegated leaf on there it's
not a problem it's more of an aesthetic issue for you if you don't want to have that on there
but obviously at that point you're making that conscious decision that you essentially are maybe
holding back the plant potentially by taking away those fully green leaves that could potentially
synthesize a bit better and actually still give it a boost and potentially still get the variation
coming back like i just showed you on the video but yeah that's all i think i wanted to say about
the chameric variegations if you want to know a bit more if you want to have a discussion about
this please do drop a comment down below in the comments i'd love to have that conversation with
you we're building a nice little community here where people are kind of interacting
they're asking questions other people that are chipping in as well which is great to see actually
so yeah i think that will be all for today potentially i hope you've enjoyed i hope
i will see you back here soon and yeah have a great rest of the day thanks bye