Tradescantia vine reverts to its parents
Q: I had a zebra vine with pinkish leaves that I wanted to propagate. Two pieces fell off when someone brushed against it, so I stuck them into two paper cups filled with damp potting soil. They were watered the same, planted in the same soil and placed next to each other in a window. But when the cuttings started growing, one looked like the mother plant. The other one grew upright, with HUGE, broad, solid green leaves! Why do they look so different? — Dina Lettre, Marietta
A: The plant is called Tradescantia zebrina by modern gardeners. Plenty of these plants found in the wild have pinkish colored leaves. The best ones are collected, propagated, named and sold to the public. Pink Tradescantia varieties have become very popular. Some, like “Pink Paradise” command high prices due to the uncommon, shiny pink variegation in the leaves. But since most are collected in the wild, there is no way to know the parent plants. Your original plant is the product of two Tradescantia of different forms and leaf color. One was the familiar vine with pink leaves; the other was an upright form with solid green leaves. One pollinated the other and the result was a seed that, when it sprouted, yielded an attractive vine that was collected and sold to the store where you bought it. Now you are witnessing reversion, where parts of the original vine when propagated look like the parent plants. I commonly see variegated privet, variegated euonymus and variegated liriope that are reverting to solid green.
Q: Alas, my side-door neighbor planted bamboo several years ago. Now a dozen or more clumps have erupted in the ivy of my landscape. I’ve chopped them to the ground regularly so now the canes that come up are small, but they never stop. I tried Roundup on the leaves but didn’t see much change in them. — Tom McGowan, Atlanta
A: Let’s root down to the root of the problem. The chopping failed because you never got deep enough to damage the roots. Likewise the Roundup didn’t work because it was not transported down to the roots. I’ve had several people tell me they’ve had good success with cutting all the bamboo canes down to 1- to 2 inches above the first node. Pour a product that contains glyphosate plus triclopyr 1/2-inch deep in the cup formed when you cut above the node. The herbicide will be sucked by the bamboo as far as it can go down into the root system. Depending on the extent of the system, you may not get all of the clumps, but you’ll get most of them. Dead bamboo — what a concept.
