PRO HINT: Although Monstera are normally sluggish growers, you can stimulate new growth by fertilizing them with organic fertilizer once a month in the spring and summer.
A hardy and simple-to-care-for species of flowering plant native to southern Mexico and Panama called Monstera deliciosa is also known as the “Due to the distinctive formation of ridges and holes on its more mature leaves, Swiss cheese plant is so named. The “The fruit that the plant produces in its native environment, which resembles a pineapple, gives the plant its deliciosa moniker.
Similar maintenance is needed for the variegated Monstera as for the solid Monstera deliciosa. The key distinction is that the variegated Monstera leaves’ white section cannot absorb light, making photosynthetic activity twice as difficult for the plant. Low light levels are therefore undesirable, and to keep your variegated Monstera happy, you should keep it in bright ambient light.
A warm, humid environment with plenty of water and soft sunlight are preferred by monsteras. Place your Monstera in a location that can receive medium to brilliant indirect light and away from vents and drafts where it would be exposed to dry air.
We offer a guide on how to measure light in your space if you are unclear about the lighting setup in your house or place of business.
As climbing plants, monsteras enjoy climbing up vertical surfaces. Use pegs or moss sticks to direct your Monstera’s growth upward if you prefer it to grow tall rather than wide.
How is Monstera variegation kept?
One of the most crucial aspects of caring for your monstera albo is understanding this. You’ll need to keep up with trimming if you want to maintain the variegation and keep it from going back to full green.
This indicates that branches with fully green leaves need to be pruned off.
Not pruning will eventually result in all of the leaves turning green, which is an issue. The plant needs to be nearly coaxed or encouraged to continue producing its stunning white leaves.
However, if your plant is entirely white, it won’t be able to photosynthesize and you don’t want that.
No matter how much you cut it back, it won’t be able to maintain its variegation if it’s placed in a dimly lit area of your home.
How can Monsteras variegation be encouraged?
Place your indoor plants in a location with greater light to encourage additional variegation in already variegated plants. More green leaves are produced the darker the stain. Your variegated plant will produce more variegation if it is placed close to a window or an artificial light source.
It is known that pruning striped plants to make them more striped may aid in boosting striped development in subsequent growth. For instance, if the variegated leaf your Monstera plant produces is entirely green, you can prune it back to the last variegated leaf in the hopes that the next growth will become even more variegated.
Even while variegation is typically desired, it is possible to have too much of it. Leaves that are completely white have very little to no chlorophyll.
If you don’t remove these leaves, your plant may keep growing in this pattern and eventually lose the ability to support itself because chlorophyll-containing green cells aren’t properly photosynthesising. As a result, you can remove all of the pure white leaves save for the final variegated leaf with green portions, hoping that the next growth will be different.
They do, indeed. Variegated plants have less chlorophyll, which reduces the amount of photosynthesis-capable surface area. They consequently require a lot more light than typical plants and develop much more slowly. The white sections of the leaves are more sensitive to the sun than the green ones, therefore be aware that they are also more likely to get sunburned.
Yes, forcing variation is conceivable in some circumstances. A nice illustration is the now-disfavored Philodendron Pink Congo. It is thought that chemicals were used to induce the growth of this plant.
It is claimed to only last for 12 to 24 months before completely turning green, however during fresh growth, it is said to generate bubble gum pink leaves. Additionally, it is often possible to duplicate the now-desired variegation if a specific virus is known to produce a particular type of variegation.
eBay is the best place to look for Monstera Deliciosa Variegata. There is a solid reason why many vendors from all over the world put their variegated plants there. They frequently go for fairly high prices. Facebook Groups, plant websites, and Instagram plant accounts are further resources.
Discover a beautiful indoor plant that looks amazing even without variegation. Its name is Begonia maculata, and it features red backs and white dots on the upper side of the leaf.
How are leaf variegation patterns maintained?
A: I purchased a houseplant with multicolored or variegated leaves last year. All of the fresh leaves that it has produced are gradually solid green. Why? Does it require special fertilizer or has it undergone a mutation?
A: Plant forms with variegated leaves are a mutation of those with plain green leaves, and they occasionally revert.
It is doubtful that fertilizer or a lack of fertilizer led to the situation you are experiencing.
Whether or not a plant is receiving the right amount of light directly affects how well it performs. A plant may grow poorly, not blossom, and be more vulnerable to pest and disease attacks due to inadequate light. Additionally, it can make plants with patterned leaves produce only plain green leaves. It’s crucial to pick houseplants that are suitable for the environment in which they will live.
The foliage plants with green leaves need the least amount of light. Most of the time, ambient light levels will be adequate. Because two-toned leaves contain less chlorophyll, which is necessary for growth, foliage plants with variegated leaves need stronger light. The plant will produce all-green leaves to produce more chlorophyll if it does not receive enough light. Variegated plants should be put next to a window or an artificial light source.
Even more light is needed for indoor flowers. They should not be in direct sunlight, but they should be placed close to a sunny window.
The most demanding plants in terms of light are the cactus and succulents, which may even need direct sunshine to thrive.
If a lack of light is the issue, moving your plant to a position with more light will probably cause it to start generating variegated leaves once more.
Try cutting the non-variegated parts of the plant if that doesn’t work and only a portion of it has returned to solid green leaves. Ideally, the plant’s remaining variegated areas will produce new variegated leaves.
If neither of these methods is successful, you should presume that the plant has returned to its previous state, which was one with green leaves, and that it is unlikely to change again.
Even common outdoor shrubs with variegated leaves, such California privet (Ligustrum ovalifolium) and evergreen euonymus (Euonymus japinicus), can generate non-variegated shoots. To keep the desired variegated leaf appearance of the shrub, these non-variegated branches should be removed through pruning.
The optimal conditions for Bermuda grass seed germination are nights with temperatures over 65 degrees.
The ideal nighttime temperatures could not come until May for homeowners in coastal or inland valleys, compared to the desert, where that is typically in April.
Can the variegation return?
Several different plant species experience variegated leaf reversion. The white shading or lighter speckles and borders turn green at this point. Many gardeners find this annoying because variegated plants add interest, lighten dark spaces, and are grown particularly to improve this trait. Plants may lose their color diversity owing to seasonality, sunlight, or other factors. Variegation loss cannot be reversed, although it may typically be stopped from taking over a plant as a whole.
Can a Monstera variegata revert?
Understanding the many types and reasons of variegation is essential for both caring for variegated specimens and understanding why many of them are so rare and difficult to find. There are many different varieties of variegated indoor plants.
Types of Variegated Indoor Plants
When you think about variegated indoor plants, you probably picture the sporadic patches, streaks, and dots of white that are distinctive to Variegated Monstera. However, there are other varieties of variegation that seem quite dissimilar and have quite different causes.
The most typical type of variegation is chimeral variegation. This type of variegation, which is brought on by a genetic mutation, manifests as two separate chromosomal make-ups in a single plant, one of which can synthesize chlorophyll while the other cannot. A plant that has white or yellow zones mixed in with its solid green shape is the consequence; this type of plant is known as a chimera. One example of this chimera is variegated Monstera deliciosa.
Chimeral variegation can occasionally be dispersed across the plant at random. This is the case, for instance, with Variegated Monstera, where you may see white or yellow spots and splotches all over the leaves, almost like paint splatters, while some leaves emerge fully green or white. As an alternative, chimeral variegation may occasionally be uniform throughout the entire plant and have symmetrical leaf patterns.
The variegated shape may be stable or unstable, depending on the plant and the reason for the variegation, which is an important point to remember. Variegated plants that are unstable may revert to their pure green form. Additionally, variegated plants may be less robust; for instance, Variegated Monstera leaves that emerge completely white cannot photosynthesize, so they usually don’t persist very long.
Because only specific plants with chimeral variegation can be successfully propagated from stem cuttings and no chimera will result, some variegated cultivars or species are difficult to find “True to type plants come from root cuttings, leaf cuttings, or seeds that display the same phenotype—in this case, variegation. This means that there are few and frequently failed possibilities to propagate this particular variety of variegated plant.
Maybe what makes chimera plants so alluring is their transient existence?
Some variegated plants, also known as pigmented or natural variation, are actually naturally patterned patterns rather than mutants. Some of our favorite indoor plants with variegation have this pattern, and fortunately, unlike chimera, this sort of variegation is encoded in the species’ or cultivar’s DNA and handed down from one generation to the next.
a collection of Marantaceae plants with pattern variegation, including Calathea and Ctenanthe
Consider the pigmented variegation on the lanceolate, green leaves of Calathea lancifolia (Rattlesnake Calathea), which has a consistent patterning of purple dots. Similar Pattern-Gene variegation is present in Ctenanthe burle-marxii (Fishbone Prayer Plant) and other Marantaceae family members.
While a species may naturally exhibit some degree of variegation, producers frequently choose for patterning and develop hybrids to emphasize and manipulate this. The outcome is a plant variation known as a cultivar, which was developed through selective breeding and cultivated.
Blister or reflected variegation is a different type of variegation that is frequently observed in our favorite indoor plants. In this kind of plant, the lowest layers of the leaves, which are colored, and the upper, which are not pigmented, generate tiny air spaces. These transparent spaces reflect light as it strikes them, giving the leaves a silvery look.
One such plant that displays this reflected variegation is watermelon peperomia (Peperomia argyreia, below). The plant’s nickname-giving silvery stripes are really strips of reflective air pockets! However, this kind of variegation doesn’t always appear symmetrically; for instance, blister variegation is also responsible for the sporadic spots on the leaves of Scindapsus pictus (also known as Satin Pothos, above).
We think reflecting variegation to be particularly appealing when it appears along the leaf veins. This is frequently observed in aroid plants like Philodendrons, Alocasias, and Anthuriums. For instance, the leaf veins of Philodendron gloriosum, Alocasia frydek, and Anthurium clarinervium all exhibit reflective/blister variegation. Stunning, no?
Some variegated leaves, like the Mosaic virus, are genuinely brought on by viruses. Even while it’s not very frequent, a virus can occasionally develop a favorable variation that can be passed on to others. One plant with variegation that exhibits this viral variegation, though it is not an indoor plant, is a particular variety of Hosta.
In the world of plants, the term “variegation” is used quite loosely. In the end, any plant with multiple hues might be referred to as variegated. The word “variegated” is derived from the latin word variegatus, which “made up of several kinds or colors.
We hope you are now better equipped to understand why plants look the way they do and why some variegated indoor plants are so difficult to find, whether you use the term in its loose interpretation to describe patterned or multicolored leaves or dive into the more technical causes of variegation described above (and it gets wayyyy more technical and scientific if you want to go down that roadwe’re no botanists, just fascinated!).
One more thing to keep in mind as you negotiate the complex world of plant variation. The italicized word variegata, which appears as the second half of a latin plant name, designates a species that is found in the wild with variegation, such as Aloe variegata. However, variegated plants are cultivated far more frequently. This would be stated in single quote marks with the word “Variegata” capitalized.
There are two cultivars of variegated Monstera that we are aware of. One is called “Albo-Variegata,” which occasionally has leaves that are entirely or partially white and has white paint-like splotches on its leaves. The second variety is called “Thai Constellation” (above), and its leaves often have a creamy-yellow variegation with considerably smaller splotches or dots.