hi everyone my name is memo this is my channel housepalanti goodness and essentially it's a place
where i like to geek out about my big passion which you might be able to see behind me and in
front of me it's tropical houseplants now today i want to talk about a very very special variegated
philodendron and it is and i'll bring it up a bit closer so you might be able to see i always make
the mistake of watering my plants before i film them so they always end up dripping on me but this
plant that you might be able to see in front of me is the philodendron white princess and you can see
some of that glorious white chunky variegation on the leaves there that i was showing a moment ago
now let's talk a bit about variegation generally and it applies to this plant as well so you might
be able to see on this leaf that i've used this i'll use this as an example because it is a good
leaf to use as an example anything that might not come up well i'll see in editing and i'll see if
i can put picture so you can see it a bit clearer on the side there but variegation is always within
the stem it's in the genetics of the plant there's very little you can do to encourage larger amounts
of variegation on your plant to get brighter variegation on what's already existing on the leaf
that's to do with light if you put it in slightly brighter light you'll get brighter
variegation so uh another video that i did was talking about polaroid variegation
it might be a more green or minty or yellowy color if it's not getting enough light if you put it
give it a bit more light without scorching the leaves or burning the leaves so that's
the fine balance that you need to figure out you will get brighter variegation so if it's
light green or minty color when you're not giving it enough light it might be cream or
white variegation when you're giving it more light it kind of works in that way now
there is something that needs to be of note about how the variegation occurs on the leaves so if you
think about it it's three layers of cells so you've got the top layer you've got the bottom
layer and you've got the middle layer and they're all sandwiched together like that now what you'll
get is on this leaf here you can see a slightly muted minty variegation there all that means is if
i show you the back of the leaf that section there which is where the variegation is on the front of
the leaf doesn't exist on the back of the leaf so that means that just the top layer is variegated
on this section of variegation here and you hopefully might be seeing that there's a slightly
brighter section right where my finger is and there's a slightly more um mint variegation there
you might be able to see if i bring up the back of that section of irrigation is that two layers are
variegated and maybe the bottom one is not so you get a brighter minty color leaning more towards
cream however when you get all three of the layers that are fully variegated you will get
variegation that looks like this and it's more of the sectoral especially if it's large areas
it's more of a sectoral and it's fully white and in that situation that entire section of
that leaf cannot photosynthesize the rest of the leaf and the rest of the plant is picking
up the slack essentially for that area of the leaf that doesn't have chloroplast if i'm not mistaken
to produce the chlorophyll which sustains the leaf through the light now which means that
generally even though we like those pure pure white sectoral variegations on a plant
sometimes you'll see a plant that will have more of this speckled and more of
this kind of mint variegation that's coming through even if you put it in brighter light
and that is because it's less damaging to the plant so i'll give you a question would you prefer
to get a plant that is variegated that fully reverts back to green or would you be happy if
that was the case and it was a either or situation to have the slightly more muted variation because
then at least you've got some level of irrigation and the plant is almost 100 happy because there is
there's enough cells that it can photosynthesize from some of the other layers of the leaf rather
than the large sectoral sections obviously you also know hopefully by this point if you've got
enough variegated plants in your care you might have already figured this out the fully variegated
on all three levels parts of leaves the ones that are bright bright white and sectoral if you don't
get the lighting just right the watering just right and the humidity just right and even then
you'll get crisping and browning because essentially if you think about it what the plant
is then doing is that section needs to go but it's not helping and if anything it's hindering
because it's using up energy when it can't produce its own energy essentially trying
to think of a non-gory example to give it this but in a situation where you've got a section
say you're in a team and this is going to be brutal but it's what the plant is doing to
survive so you're doing you're in a team and there is one person in the team that is doing nothing
and everybody else is carrying the weight very quickly what will happen is that team will
oust that team member off the team because they're sick and tired of carrying the weights
of the work that's needed because that one individual will not be doing the work hopefully
that that kind of makes a bit of sense probably the best example i could have given but you know
um the other thing to kind of bear in mind about this plant and i'll show you if i bring it in a
bit closer is you might be able to see some of these aerial roots this plant will quite readily
produce aerial roots you've seen that i as always i've got it on my trusty kind of janky support
sticks rather than moss poles because i ain't got no time for that however i will be making
a moss pole soon i'll do a video on it from a method of creating a moss pole that i've seen from
a very dear friend on instagram and i want to try her method i know she also found it from somebody
else as well but i'll give her credit because that's where i saw i saw it essentially and that
is for a self-watering moss bowl when i make that hopefully i'll do a video as well and you can see
how i did it with the other thing as well to note about this specific plant and again i'll bring it
a bit closer and hopefully it's going to come out you can see there's pink and there's red within
that caterpillar we've talked about this before a cataphile is where the leaf will emerge from on
philodendron specifically but that harkens back to the original dna and genetics of this plant
if i'm not mistaken if i am mistaken i'll correct myself somewhere on the screen this is linked to
the philodendron erubescence if i'm not mistaken and that is also the same philodendron that
is what is producing the pink princess and you saw the pink and some of that red stem on there as
well you do occasionally get some white princesses that will push out a pink variegated leaf much
like the pink princess and for a very long period of time i think people were seeing this and even
when this there was a few white princesses that came out in the uk and eu at around the same
time people weren't selling that for any more i think now they've named it something in order
to sell it for more so those plants that have got that throwback a bit more predominant might sell
for a bit more i don't know if that is something that's stable or if that's something that every
single white princess could eventually produce a fully pink leaf because of the plant that was
originally what was creating it purely because if i'm not mistaken and if you've ever cut
a pink princess you'll see that the sap that comes out is red and it almost looks like it's bleeding
i'm pretty sure i have not cut this plant yet to propagate or do anything yet i generally
like to let my plants get really really big and then maybe cut down in order to
relieve some of the height and the pressure and then i propagated so when i do i'll let you know
what the sap is from this plant but i have very sneaky suspicion if it's not fully red it will be
a pinkish color as well so it kind of harkens back to that aerobases which is potentially if
i'm not mistaken what is one of the parent plants for both this and the pink princess
and that's where the pink and the reds are coming from i think that's everything obviously care of
some terracotta pot as all my other philodendrons and it's in a chunky light airy arrowed soil
mix if you want to know what how i do the mix there's a video on my channel if you want to see
what ingredients i use there's a link down below in the description do check it out
but yeah i think that's everything i wanted to say about this plant for now if you've got any
questions comments do drop them down below i'd love to have that conversation with you
hopefully you've enjoyed hopefully i shall see you here soon
and i truly truly hope that you have a great rest of your day thanks bye