Is there any reason why a branch that is completely free of chlorophyll should not be removed? Does such a branch ever revert to having chlorophyll?

Hey Jungle,
I don't know if you SHOULD cut off a branch that has no Chlorophyll or not, I ended up cutting off a branch from my Variegated Eureka Lemon because all the leaves had fallen off. A long Yellowish stick poking out of an otherwise healthy tree was just bothering me.
Darren

I'll leave the short stub on my Variegated Pink and see what happens. I expect it, being an energy sink, will not grow much anyway. I may feel differently come spring time when I have my pruners in hand.

The leaves will burn & as Darren stated you will have a bare stick which will eventually die off.

Laaz, are you suggesting all such growth should be removed as soon as they appear?

I have let them go in the past & all that have no chlorophyll at all burn very badly if left in the sun. In my opinion I would remove them.

I don't think it'll ever get enough sun indoors to burn the leaves especially where it's located in mid-canopy but I'll remove it anyway. Thanks.

White color doesn't mean it can't photosynthesize. There are various variations of photosynthetic apparatus when it comes to colors.

The only leaves that will never photosynthesize is that if they are made of reflectors, LOL.

Seriously, this needed to be studied more. What we perceive as white it doesn't really mean it is reflecting all color wavelengths and not using anything. Take for example the infrared and invisible indigo wavelength, invisible to our naked eye, but these could be absorbed by white pigments. I know that some ornamentals have almost white leaf colors but they were proven to photosynthesize. Some cultivars of Codiaeum variegatum are good examples that have seemingly white leaves but we have tested to be absorbing carbon dioxide and giving off oxygen in the presensce of sunlight, way back in high school.

I would appreciate anybody here posting credible references that tells us that the seemingly no green chlorophyll citrus leaves are non-photosynthesizing at all. Then I would give it a rest.

I can not say that shoots with no chlorophyll are non-photosynthesizing at all, but are not worth keeping as they are non-productive and will eventually burn and die off.

From experience the variegated plants with different shades of green do the best, where variegated plants with a higher percentage of white do the worst. Also growing the plants with the highest percentage of white will do very poorly in direct sun, whereas the variegated plants with only different shades of green will do very well in direct sun.

Personally I don't let my plants waste energy on producing pure white sports, when they are better off putting energy into sports with at least a decent percentage of chlorophyll.

Laaz, that is often true with citruses and bananas, the albino portions will often have a net loss than net gain when it comes to photosynthate production. It is true that it can photosynthesize but it will spend more energy on respiration, just not efficiently photosynthesizing. It is however not true with other plants.

I agree with Lazz. There may be exceptions, but generally speaking, it has been my experience that plants lacking chlorophyll are less vigorous than their green counterparts. The less chlorphyll, the less vigor. With a total absence of chlorphyll the part or plant dies. I would remove the limb lacking chlorophyll - it serves no purpose. I have never seen an example of a totally white plant that was thriving.

In planting seed of variegated plants, I have found that they virtually always produce seedlings without chlorophyll (or at least no green pigment). They all die, without exception.

Ned

The color of the shoot makes a big difference
to me in that a white shoot may not live long
enough to ever turn green in that once it is
exposed to direct light it will either not expand
much more, more likely will be sloughed off by
the tree in relative short order (energy diverted
elsewhere in the tree so that the weakened
shoot is not allowed to grow) or will get badly
burned from direct sunlight and will wither and
collapse or the shoot is yellow in color which
also may be sensitive to direct sunlight but
may be able to maintain and grow a little
more and will eventually slow down its
growth rate and just stop in its growth.
Unless we have a specific need to keep
the yellow branch it may be better to prune
it off and cut back to green growth. The
white colored shoot should come off pretty
soon after we see it for outdoor plants as
it will not do a whole lot for us but the
golden colored shoot might continue to
grow on for a while but do not expect a
whole lot more growth to come from it.

Indoors you can try an experiment to see
if the shoot will show vigor and keep growing
and later turn green. We may be dealing
with a process that carried out incomplete
or inhibited chemical functions that resulted
in plastid development not being able to
yield green chlorophyll for a short time,
we may have more than one chlorophyll
at work here which can make a difference
and we may have the off pigment colored
shoots become green later on as I've seen
happen on occasion in that what once was
a golden colored shoot that was protected
from direct sun later became green where
it was exposed to ambient sunlight and the
shaded area remained the golden color
(I've seen it happen in juvenile shoots and
in leaf petioles in the Orido nishiki Japanese
Maple).

Albinism (white) in a plant may be devoid
of chlorophyll but if we look at Citrange's
variegated leaf page we can see blends
of colors and if the lighter colored areas
were devoid of chlorophyll we would have
severe burning in those lighter colored
areas once exposed to direct sunlight.
When we see a variety of colors almost
giving rise to the notion that the colors
are dispersed in layers in the leaves
then we have something other than
albinism going on in that even one of
the Variegated Pink Eurekas we
have has produced all yellow
colored leaves, no green in them
that we can see but that does not
mean that the green is not there
as the leaf itself does not seem to
be inhibited in any way, so the
plastids in that leaf are fully capable
of photosynthesizing but we are not
seeing a green color as a result. Not
all pigments in the plant are green
in color and not all chloroplasts yield
green pigments.

I believe that one of the chlorophylls
is known to be able to yield yellow green
pigmentation intermittently, meaning it
has the capacity or ability to produce
yellow pigmentation in a leaf depending
on the amount of foot candles of light
received and due to the structure and
function of the lamellae within the
chloroplasts. I believe E.W. Sinnott
felt that the DNA found in cytoplasm
could change the chemical function
and development of the chloroplast
and thus variegation in a leaf could
be achieved due to the lamellae’s
altered structure limiting the
production of green chlorophyll
as we know it to be, thus we can
get other colored pigments to come
about from the defective lamellae
as a result, which would partially
explain why we see the layered
effect of colors and shades of
green in some of the variegated
Citrus leaves.

Jim

The branch in question is yellow. It will likely be pruned at some time anyway whether it's green or not in order to shape the tree. I just wondered if such branches ever reverted to a more normal form and Jim provided us with the answer. Thanks, Jim.

Even if a plant having only yellow or white foliage could be made viable, IMO it would have little ornamental value (but then beauty is in the eye of the beholder).

Junglekeeper, the chlorophyll molecule is a "large" complicated molecule (C55H72O5N4Mg) made up of 137 atoms of five different chemicals (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, magnesium and oxygen). Most everyone is aware that chlorophyll is the substance in the tree's leaf that cause the green coloration. However, it is not the complete molecule that produces the color. The molecule contains 4 internal units call the tetrapyrrole ring structure, which is common to all light absorbing chlorophyll molecules. It is the tetrapyrrole ring that gives chlorophyll the green color. Depending on the correctness or completeness of these rings the amount of green leaf coloration exists. If your leaf is not white, or to put it another way, if your leaf is yellow, light lime, or tinged, the tetrapyrrole ring could be producing some photosynthesis, thus some energy. BTW, nitrogen is arguably essential to the entire photosynthetic apparatus, since it is contained in these individual pyrrole subunites, that form the tetrapyrrole ring structure. Because these rings are what give chlorophyll its green color, and the term "chlorotic" suggests an absence of green, which is a typical manifestation of nitrogen deficiency, that reflects compromised chlorophyll function within chloroplasts. This is also the reason leaves turn yellow when the element Nitrogen is deficient in the tetrapyrrole rings, and also why leaves turn darker green when nitrogen fertilizers are applied. However, the nitrogen scenario is an aside, and I am not suggesting your tree is nitrogen deficient. - Millet

Thanks, Millet, for providing the technical background.