TRADESCANTIA TRICOLOR LOSING ITS PINK LEAVES?

Is your ‘TRADESCANTIA TRICOLOR LOSING ITS PINK’ leaves? (Sometimes known as Tradescantia tricolor ‘Minima’ or Callisia repens ‘Bianca’ or Tradescantia minima ‘Tricolor’ and several more synonyms!) This lovely Wandering Jew (or Pink Inch plant) with the various amounts of variegations on the same plant is always popular amongst houseplant owners – but it has a tendency to lose its lovely pink variegated leaves and turn green instead. Here’s what to do about it.

Prefer to read than watch? Here’s a transcript:

Discussion:

So, today we’re talking about Tradescantia and in particular Tradescantia tricolour or sometimes called Tradescantia tricolour minima.

It’s a very popular house plant and one of the common questions that I very often get asked and I see online is: 

How can I stop my Tradescantia tricolor losing its pink leaves?

So, I’m going to tell you about some of my samples and some of my plants and I’m going to tell you what I know all about Tradescantia tricolor.

My plants:

So, I’ve had this one plant a couple of years and this is named as Tradescantia tri-color minima. Sometimes you’ll see it with various names and that’s just what happens with Tradescantia. It’s 

quite confusing and I can’t deny that I’m not confused too with all the different hybrids and what we have here is a plant with lots and lots of different variegations in fact you could say it has a variety of variegations.

Colours / Variegations:

So, in this one plant we’ve got the plain green leaves, nice purple-pink leaves. We’ve got like various degrees of variegation where we have only a little bit of green. We’ve got some with quite a lot of green and only a little bit of the cream coming through just and then I’ve got these that don’t seem to have any pigment in them at all. 

So, it’s a really pretty plant it – grows very quickly and I would like to say it’s trouble free but it’s really not! But there are a few things that you can learn about it which will make sure that you’ll always have one and you’ll always have it in a really nice kind of form. 

So first of all, the question I’m trying to answer here is how can I stop my Tradescantia tricolor losing its pink leaves?

Answer:

No great mystery as with most variegated plants the variegated form is usually unstable and what you find is these green leaves here that come through because they can photosynthesize more efficiently than the other leaves and the leaves with variegations. 

Then these are the ones that eventually take over the plant so left to its own devices you will end up with a plant with just green leaves and that is not a nice plant.

It’s called reversion.

Another sample plant:

Now, I’ll tell you about my other Tradescantia. 

This is also Tradescantia tri-color minima. In fact, this one is a cutting taken from the one which I told you about earlier. So, I simply took a little bit of that plant. Get something about 10 centimeters long. You can put it in some media, even in a  jar of water and you’re going to get it to root so taking a little leaf cutting like

that and this is what it turns into – it’s not unattractive, it’s got beautiful glossy leaves but as you can see it’s not really what we’re after. This is what we want. This lovely variation and I didn’t mention it that the undersides are just as attractive as top side of the leaves. 

The original Tradescantia tricolor minima:

Leaving the plant on its own devices:

So, what you’ll get if just leave it to its own devices is that it will not have any colour other than green, no variegation.

Things to mention:

I have couple of things to mention about temperatures. So, the variegation plant has been kept at a minimum of 12 degrees Celsius ( 53 Fahrenheit ) and we’re in just the beginning of springtime now.

It’s march, not quite spring, but you know the temperatures are beginning to warm up a little bit at some point during the day. The sun’s out so in my greenhouse here occasionally the temperature is getting up to 15 16 or even 18 degrees Celsius during the day (some days of the week). In this temperature it seems happy.

But in a house the temperature is roughly 20 degrees plus. It’s going to struggle a little bit, maybe if it gets a real load of light (not direct

sunlight) but a lot of light.

I’ve found that if I keep it in the warm side of my greenhouse that’s a minimum of 18 degrees Celsius (64 Fahrenheit) it doesn’t do quite as well.

Another sample plant:

I have another one of the same age, taken at the same time but this one is not doing so well. 

So, the question is:

What can we do about it? 

Well first thing to do is to make sure that whenever you get an opportunity you pull out the pure green stems. Pull those off because they will take over the plant and it can end up like that one I told you about earlier. 

Also pull out the ones with no pigment. 

Take insurance:

This is what you need to do when you get a chance and it’s really easy to do, take some cuttings of the variegated leaves and the leaves with no pigment just simply cut them off, stick them in some media. It really doesn’t matter what media they can even go in pure perlite if you wanted to or pure vermiculite, it doesn’t matter.

Eventually they’re going to need to be in like a multi-purpose compost.

Don’t let them too wet. Remember they are related to succulents so they do want to dry out at some point and then get a nice thorough water through – let it drain through. Don’t let them sit in water and they should be okay so take some insurance and you will always have nice variegated tri-color minima tradescantia.

So, it’s not rocket science it’s just a case of taking some insurance of these plants. These are prone to all sorts of things.

In winters:

I’ve found that during the winter months even though I’ve kept this at 12 degrees C it really doesn’t look its best through the winter months and you’ll find that you’ll get all sorts of browning leaves, dying leaves, leaf spotting all sorts of things like that.

Try and keep the humidity to a minimum and if you can’t do that try and make sure that those leaves don’t actually get water sitting on them because they’re very easy to turn brown with any kind of moisture sitting on the leaves. We want them to be in a breeze, a little bit dry, with a little bit of ventilation. Don’t over water them make sure that the water is kept just barely to keep keep them going through those winter months and you’ll find that come spring they will make a rapid return to form.

They don’t want to be too warm otherwise you’ll end up with one with an all green one. 

You can also remove pure pink leaves to maintain more variegated ones.

Take some insurance. Do yourself some cuttings and then you’ll find that you’ll always have these lovely Tradescantia leaves with all the different variegations on it. 

A tip:

I’ve actually taken some of them out purposely with variegations of various amounts on the leaves just to see what happens. How the one with no pigment in it survives I really don’t know! And in this way, you can make up an extra pot and you can keep doing it and keep doing it but if you don’t take some insurance you may find that eventually it either turns completely green or it just gives up the ghost and you get fed up of it because it looks so dreadful.