Marie Elena, from the ones I have seen similar to yours. Which by the way is gorgeous. The lower leaves hold more green and new leaves can be pink toned, turning white as leaf ages.

You may find in a filtered sunlight site that it could be different.

Water on the leaves, if worse on the more white leaves as opposed to the ones with more green, may be due to burning?

I would play around with different locations and see how it responds.

If you go on Facebook. Give N.R.Sundaram (AbenaAdeniums - India) a message and ask him. He has had a number of these on his site. He is marvelous and very helpful.

Rick

Ah, sunburn sounds just about right. Fabulous, Rick! Thank you so much for always being so helpful.

I love variegated anything and always wanted a variegated adenium. It took planting 300 seeds to get this one! This seedling is for KO_10, by the way. With the contrast, it will make a pretty spectacular plant ... an absolute keeper! I think I'm going to put a hamsa on its pot!

Adenium Obesum "KO_10" · More Info

Maria Elena

The leaves of that seedling, Maria Elena is all it needs. If if should produce a bloom such as that ontop of those leaves. Better get grafting and produce some more. Absolutely gorgeous. I love Variegates as well.

Rick

Great idea!

Grafting in the future, when it's older , right? I have never done any grafting at all and don't even know where to begin. I've watched all the videos and read all the great material posted here but have no practical experience in this area. And I am a hands-on learner ... have to do it to learn it.

In the meantime, I can set aside a generic pink root stock now with future grafting in mind ... have been giving them away! I can also make sure this one is well pruned for a multi branched canopy. Each pruning will be a graft scion, then.

We'll cross the grafting bridge when we get there! BTW, I did as suggested and left a message for Sundaram on FB.

Maria Elena

I myself have been getting a good amount of variegation I from some hybrid seed that I bought. About 10-15%. I'm hoping for a nice flower with good variegation as Rick mentioned.

Abel

Wow! 10-15%? If you don't mind my asking, who are you purchasing seed from? I'd love to try my hand at those odds.

I'm buying from Rinoa. I'll take pictures in a few days when I get home. I'm buying triple hybrid crosses (seed)and I was surprised. The crosses are a bit more expensive, but I don't mind if I can get lucky with a gem.

I'm familiar with Rinoa. Don't Rinoa and KO have the same seed, basically? Half my seed is from KO and this is my first variegate. I have at least 8 of his crosses. I also have a few Rinoa seedlings. I'd love to see your variegated seedlings.

Mabye but I'm not too sure. As far as I know Ko produces his own seed and Rinoa buys from yang ming which they themselves produce their own seed. I know Rinoa used to work with Ko or something like that but don't know if she still does business with him.

Not a fan of variegated plant but this variegation is special and beautiful. Congrats! Hope to have a seedling like this one day :)

Latinlady. I love your bloom. So BEAUTIFUL.

Marie

Hi Maria lots of fun right 300 your almost as bad as me

roger

Well, that's over a 2.5 year period. And, I didn't keep them all ... just yours and a select few. I gift away a lot of plants & seeds here locally but there are always a good 80 or so in my yard awaiting blooms. I love starting new seeds each spring, so that's always a flat of 100 or so new seedlings.

By the way, your light pink is another hit. They are big and chubby at 5 months! I shared a lot of seeds but have 13 of those in 3 & 4" pots:

I keep the structural beauties. A few for me and more gifts to spread the love. I am intent on making this an adenium heaven! And, of course, Mom is now surrounded by flowers. She really enjoys them as we go out into the garden every morning to see what pleasant surprise they have for us each day.

Now I just need to get some Thai arabicum "big boy" seeds, a baby pachypodium, and Tanzanian zipper and I'll be one happy camper!

Maria Elena

I agree with Rick about moving your variegated to a dappled sun area to give it some protection from sun. It may help it throw a little more green as well as protect the leaves. Whatever kind of flower it throws it will be stunning, as it is already beautiful! The only seedling I had that was absolutely /certain/ was variegated finally up and died on me and was a huge pain in the butt to keep the leaves from dropping. It was from Rinoa seed as well, a Keseki baby.

Variegated plants usually are not quite as healthy or hardy as the standard form of the plant. So if it drops leaves more often than other plants, that isn't entirely unusual.

Water on leaves can act as a magnifying lens, and burn normal leaves in intense sunlight. The effect would probably be even worse for a varigated plant.

The advice to put the plant in less direct light is definitely a good idea, because varigated plants can “revert” back to being green if they are exposed to stresses including too much sunlight. I don't know how prone adeniums are to it, but it's definitely something to consider.

Hi, Stuart ... Nice to see you. Beautiful trees!

Are your variegated adeniums in full, direct sun all the time or do they get a little shade?

I was considering moving mine to morning-only direct sun but am very hesitant. That would be on a semi closed porch where there is not sufficient air movement. It's my experience that insufficient air movement can lead to aphids/mealy/scale infestation due to the ant population that is a very real part of island living.

Maria Elena

They are in full sun, no shade. I will put transparent construction foil on the roof to protect the baby seedlings against the rain.

Thank you, Stuart. Really nice. How old are your trees in the bonsai pots? They look small ... Did you cut the roots? If so, at what age?

After a year or two of burnt leaves, I finally placed my variegated leaved DR so they get morning sun until 1pm, and shade for the heat of the day. Which here in North Texas can be 100 plus degrees.

Looks really nice, Lonnie. Great job.

They do look great, Lonnie! I think protection from full sun also helps encourage some green.

It's actually really bad for variegated plants of any kind to go all white. It makes them weaker because they aren't producing any new leaves that have chlorophyll and when the older leaves later drop off, where is that going to leave you? With a plant that is at high risk of dying.

So if it's in full sun now and turning all white, I would definitely move it to a more part shade location and give it a dose of epsom salts (ratio of 1 tablespoon per gallon) to encourage it to make at least a little bit of green in the leaves. It is going to need to keep producing at least 30% green to maintain the plant, and 50% or more is better. This isn't just true of adeniums, but any variegated plant for long term viability.

I've grown a lot of variegated plants of many kinds over the years. You learn a few tricks, and their downfalls, though each and every kind of them have their own quirks. Some the variegation is linked to temperature, others to light. There's also a whole slew of genetics and chimeric combinations that make variegated leaves so learning which is which is also helpful down the road, but can be complicated to sort.

Thank you all for the tips. I will put some shade for the variegated plants.

Maria Elena. The bonsai pots are not so small. The left and the middle ones have virgin roots and are 1-2 years old. The decorated roots plants is 2 years old and I did graft 3 black hussade on the branches, I root trained it at 6-8 month old. The right one is a 2 years old cutting.

Mine started out looking just like that, Stxeriscape!

Adenium Obesum "94 KO_10" · More Info

I moved it out of direct sunlight as advised and one week later it has greened up significantly, from this:

to this:

** Last photo updated.

Maria Elena

Whoa! That's pretty cool! It sure does look healthier now, and if you want more variegation just give it more sun ;) lol. The funny thing about mine was that I didn't notice the variegated ones until one day that I checked out my seedlings at night with a flashlight. During the day I thought it was just the leaves being shiny and the sun reflecting off them.

I do not like the mottled, speckled coloration. Now I question whether this is actually variegation or virus.

It doesn't look like virus to me. Mosaic virus has a rather unique pattern. If you Google up images of it and study them, it doesn't matter what kind of plant is effected. You'll see similarity in the pattern from one kind of leaf to another. Now admittedly other kinds of virus produce other patterns but the Mosaic is the closest to looking like variegation and I think after you study it closely you won't mistake the two.