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Old 08-11-2017, 06:04 PM   #10 (permalink)
meizzwang
 
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Default Re: Best medium to grow The Manini - AeAe

With regards to Aeae and soil, I remember reading somewhere that pH might have something to do with the production of variegation in the leaves. I originally acquired my aeae plant from California Carnvivores (as mentioned above) and it was beautifully laden with white pigments, much like hmelendez's plant photographed here: Beautiful, Royal And Majestic 'Ae Ae' Is Flowering! . Come the fall time, the plant was given zero N, and very high P,K, and the leaves turned almost solid green with almost no variegation. The reason for the P and K was to increase solutes in the leaves and pstem, which hypothetically could give it better cold tolerance. At the same time, this may have also shot up the pH and instead of being slightly acidic, the soil may have become basic.

For reference, I'm in Northern California, so we have light frosts every winter. In late spring of this year, I added a 2" thick layer of rhododendron (acidic) soil around the root zone, and a month or two later, the new leaves started to color up again and show some variegation but overall, the leaves are still mostly green! It never got really white like last season when I first planted it in the ground.

In retrospect, it's a godsend because last year, every single leaf burned up and the plant looked like a wreck (it's in full sun), but now I have very little if any burning, and the plant is growing much stronger and faster than before. Here's some recent photos of my Aeae, taken 8/6/17:


The base of some leaves are very white, but that's about it:


Close up of some of the variegation, not very white like before, but still really beautiful:




New cigar leaf:


This plant doesn't pup up like the others, but I finally got 2 pups to show up. Get this, the first pup is much more variegated than the mother plant!





At this point, I can't explain if it has to do with soil pH or if some pups are just more mutated than others. Did the mother plant revert or get less mutated?

It also makes me wonder, there were comments that Aeae isn't tissue cultured because they don't turn out uniformly variegated in vitro. I think that would be the ultimate test to see if pH has anything to do with white pigment production, since you can closely and precisely measure pH when tissue culturing. My soil, on the other hand, is dynamic: there's a layer of topsoil from various sources and deep underneath is gravel mixed with native soil.

Last edited by meizzwang : 08-11-2017 at 06:27 PM.
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