Hi,

I read all the messages in variegated forum, I also googled more info but I am still confused of grafting variegated varieties

I asked before about it and Laaz answered, thanks;

Quote:

If the bud you took was from a variegated citrus it will most likely produce a variegated sprout. There is the chance it will revert back to green...

But what is this chance he is talking about, 50%,10%-100%...?
Do you have any experiences in grafting variegated varieties.

Now I have 2 new variegated trees, a calamondin and a pink lemon.I want to t-bud them on poncirus trifoliata, flying dragon and sour orange rootstocks but I am not sure if I will have variegated trees in a year or full green normal trees

I am so excited that I have variegated trees so please excuse my excitement and curiosity, if I am missing any message and post about it.

Thanks,

So far all variegated citruses turned out variegated after budding or bark grafting.

The chance of reverting back to green could be very low, probably less than 1%. It also works the other way around. But so far, after more than 9,000 T-buds none of the green ones became variegated. I only did a few variegated citrus grafts, perhaps less than 100, and none of them turned green.

I have grafted green paw-paws and one of my grafts became variegated. I have never been able to repeat that.

This is great news JoeReal, I am happy to hear that.

How about light conditions for variegated citrus? Do I need to take special attention to their light/shade condition or can I keep them with all other citrus varieties together in bare sun?

Thanks a lot

Sometimes, unexpected things are observed. I found my variegated citruses to be more tolerant of full hot sun and at the same time are slightly cold hardier than their regular counterparts. But if they are partially shaded, they would develop better looking and bigger foliage which I love about them.

Thanks JoeReal.

So there is nothing special, I will take care of them as all of my other citrus trees.

There is nothing special, just depends on the bud. I have had one Buddahs hand that budded out green from a variegated bud. I have also had a variegated BH sprout a green bud sport.. May just be the genetics in the plant itself, but it is possible.

Thanks Laaz,

I will keep (rootstock/succes rate) statics and share later here.

Just like most anything there are times our experiments
do not go according to plan but to take a known variegated
bud and t-bud, bark graft or side graft onto a Flying Dragon
rootstock you should have nearly all of the plants that will
remain variegated. There may be an exception or two
come about but they are insignificant in number, less
than 5 percent, all things being equal. That does not
mean that the variegated bud cannot change in color
later however in part due to other factors such as the
genetics of it or too much (most of the time) or too little
nutrient flow in the plant or due in part to our climate
and growing conditions that can cause some changes
to occur. Vigor can help us for variegated trees and
vigor in the tree can really hurt us.

In years past variegated put together plants could return
to green as reversion means something other to a Maple
grower for instance. The thing to do sometime is take
several seeds from fruit from a two-parent, scion and
and rootstock manually put together plant and see how
many of the seedlings stay variegated by their third year.
In the past seedlings from some of the sectional chimera
fruit that came about from a chimera that produced leaves
and fruit that were variegated did not always remain this
way or in earlier trials some of the seed from the fruit
were actually sterile which gave a false/positive to the
tests that all of the seed that were germinated came
out variegated as when people went back in and counted
the number of seeds that were planted versus the number
of seedlings that germinated there was a higher ratio of
seed that never did germinate. Then upon closer look
some seed was determined to have defective endosperms
or did not have endosperms at all. [Call them embryos in
Citrus if you prefer].

We can tell which seed is more likely to be viable by
doing the floater test by macerating the seed in a jar
filled with water and seeing which seed float and which
seed sink. Comes in real handy to know if and when
we want to scarify hard coated seed later such as some
of the bi-color and unusual colored native Lupine seed
as an example that I've dealt with years ago. When
"Jimmy Lupine seed" went allover collecting seed just
to naturalize them in a whole new, different setting.

I think the Variegated Pink Eureka is pretty stable in that
the number of manually propagated progeny will more
likely remain variegated. I feel the same way about the
variegated Calamondin. I do not feel the same way
about the old variegated Cara Cara and know firsthand
what that plant will do and what it won't do. It was
because the tree wanted to go green more often than
stay variegated is why a variegated rootstock was
selected out just for it to help it along to stay variegated.
[Not going to go into detail in a forum format as now
I am into unpublished, by design, information]. Years
ago there was a variegated Lime, okay, I'll bite here,
a variegated Mexican Lime that could go back
and forth in that some years every leaf had some
variegation and in some years about a quarter
of the leaves or less remained variegated. The
tree was on its own roots so there was no chance
for it to return to what the rootstock parent was
and completely change on us (lose all of the
variegation) other than to throw out an abundance
of green leaves but the leaf shapes and sizes did
not change much, unlike a plant that returns to
what the rootstock parent looks like of which
you can see in rare cases when your Lime starts
throwing out top shoots with trifoliate leaves on
them. [The good old days is when we noticed it
more on some but not very many plants].

Sometime grow the old true form Butterfly or the
old Roseomarginatum Japanese Maples on their
own roots and see what a reversion is when we
have green leaves come about from a shoot that
have different shapes than the variegated leaves
we see in the Maples. Had the Maples been bark
or side grafted then when we see the green leaves
that are about the same size and shapes as the
variegated leaves, then we call this a return to the
wild type green seedling and it may not be a result
of the rootstock interaction with the scion. This
could be and has been true for some plants to be
a natural process as opposed to when the non
variegated shoots show some vigor we trim them
out otherwise they can take over the entire Maple
or Pine, Dogwood or whatever in time if we let it
but we are more apt to see the overly vigorous
green growth in Japanese Maples, much more
commonly so than we will see in budded or grafted
Citrus. We do see it in Citrus as some of you are
well aware of and why it is that we trim out all of
the growth emanating from the rootstock below the
graft or bud for the same reasons others do for other
woody plants.

Jim

Thanks a lot for your experiences Jim, very detailed info