Reversion

BBC Gardeners' World Magazine

Published: Saturday, 23 March 2019 at 3:00 pm

Learn how to deal with your variegated plant reverting to plain green foliage.

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Sometimes shoots appear on previously plain-leaved plants with attractive variegations, and these can then be propagated by nurserymen to make a new plant. But the new variegated plant might try to revert to all-green foliage because the mutation isn't stable. If left, this all-green growth, which will be more vigorous than the variegated kind, will take over the plant.

Symptoms

Variegated leaves are caused by natural mutations, but these mutations aren't always a stable, permanent feature, and the plant might try to revert to the original, all-green leaves.

Find it on

any variegated plant

Organic

The only solution is to cut back any all-green growth to leave just the desired variegated foliage.

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