I recently bought a new solid green spider plant. I’ve had spider plants for decades - both variegated and solid - but this new one has bolder and broader leaves, very dark with just a hint of variegation. All my other spider plants have always produced plantlets identical to the parent plant, i.e. solid begets solid, variegated begets variegated. Well, much to my surprise the new plant has produced a variegated plantlet. It’s beautiful, but not what I expected. What gives?
Possibilities include the plantlet’s leaves getting darker as it gets bigger, to resemble the parent plant. Or just a vegetative sport which will remain variegated.
Vegetative “breaks” like this are a common way that variegated plants are discovered and subsequently propagated. There’s often a tendency for the new forms to revert back to “normal”; i.e. a variegated-leaf plant will start producing all green leaves which have to be removed or eventually the whole plant will have green leaves. Not surprising, since typically the more chlorophyll in the leaf, the more vigorous the plant is and the weaker variegated elements are crowded out.
Yeah I had a spider plant years ago with a reversed sport baby: the original plant was white-striped in the middle, green on the edges, and the sport was white-edged, green in the middle.
I got so excited I cut it off too early and subsequently killed it. Oh well.
I’m guessing that my green with white stripe spiders (all clones of one plant) are a hybrid. They produce flowers and seeds, and any spider grown from the seeds is solid green. I’ve never yet gotten a striped one. And I’ve grown out a couple dozen of them from different seedings.
I did get a curly-leafed one once. The leaves had a loose spiral twist down their length. That was interesting.