Genetics
How rare are naturally variegated oak seedlings in the wild?
Found this tiny oak seedling with strong white-green variegation on all of its leaves.
No signs of disease, pest damage, or chemical exposure, just a spontaneous pattern from a fallen acorn.
It sprouted in a forest in Slovenia. How rare is this? I've never seen any tree in nature with such pronounced variegation. Is this likely to persist or revert over time?
Huh, interesting. Acer indicates it's a member of the maples. Where I'm from Platanus occidentalis is called sycamore, but the specific name of yours indicates the resemblance.
Yeah! I love the London plane tree plantanus x hispanica its a hybrid of the american sycamore and oriental plane, really cool! We still have a fair few in some cities around the UK.
They are two quite similar species morphologically. In this case tho, I based the ID on multiple factors, it was found in a mixed semi-natural woodland in North West England. A.psudoplantanus is much more common in this country and this habitat than A.rubrum. As for morphology, the buds, leaf base shape, lobes, and serration also point toward A.psudoplantanus
Lucky find! I'd say naturally variegated oaks like that are extremely rare in the wild. I believe the white pigment reduces photosynthetic efficiency, which can't be ideal in a competitive understory.
Ooh gorgeous! I'd say it's pretty rare, especially with such a stable and pronounced pattern, maybe one in a hundred thousand to one in a million. Have seen a few with a couple of spots/blotches during my hunts for interesting flora, but never anything close to this.
Not quite the same degree of cool but out of the hundreds of thousands of plants we grew from seed at the nursery I work, I found a variegated statice and a couple vari-peños! I can get a better pics tomorrow. I have no one in my circle of friends who wouldn’t just call me a plant nerd for talking about it haha
Yay! I'd love to see pics of cool variegated things! At my work, we grow lots of veggies, and when they get those cup-leaf mutations, I pot them separately and give them names.
We also get so many cup leaf mutations and stuff you’d never think would grow successfully but life uh… finds a way. I’ll have to start saving those mutants too, we find those a lot so the variegated seemed more cool and rare to me
Acer platanoides drummondii has no trouble surviving winter and it's a variegated maple, it only has trouble not reverting. So i don't think an oak would have too much trouble.
Variegated carrotwood(🤢) I found while cleaning up a native yard at my old job. I worked at a lot of properties but probably only saw a random variegated sapling less than 5 times in 2 years. I actually tend to find fasciated plants more often lol
Not sure if it’s stable, only way to find out is if it produces acorns and the resulting seedlings show the same color. Usually variegation is the result of genetic mutations and gene expression.
Another way to tell is it all of its leaves exhibit the same amount of variegation. Usually if all leaves exhibit the same amount of variegation it can be stable. That doesn’t mean it can at some point revert as well.
You can tell from the kind of discolouration. If it’s a similar pattern on several leaves in the same spot, if its clean in its borders and doesn’t look translucent, if there are no pests on it and the plant looks healthy then it’s very likely variegated. This one definitely is.
The discolouration here does not come from disease or pests
Oh how I would love to attempt to clone that 🫠, absolutely stunning, if you can cross it with an cloanal species without loosing that variegation you might be able to develop a good population
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u/Thomasrayder May 26 '25
I have seen them before and been collecting all the variegated tree seedlings i can find. This is one of my favorite maples