Ficus Folks--Anyone Seen All White One?

[cjm3fl]

I'm a fan of Ficus Benjamina.
I have more then a dozen in different sizes. I have ones in 3 inches pots and a few patio-trees in 24 inch pots.

I have the green leafed, a pair of the variegated, and some of the 'starlight' variety.

On the lower trunk of my 6 foot 'starlight' tree I noticed a new side-branch and never got around to taking it off.
For this tree I like a clean trunk for the lower 4 feet.

Well some months have passed and I've watch this side branch slowly grow.
It's weird. The 1st three leaves had the normal green and white colors, but were deformed.
All the other new leaves (over 50 now) are totally white.

I check google and bing and can't find any mention, or pictures, of Ficus trees with totally white leaves, except for artificial ones.

Anyone ever heard about/seen any?

I'm really good about getting Ficus cuttings to root, over 95% success rate, but I'm not going to try and make this into a cutting so late in the season.

Here's a pair pics from both sides...

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It probably has no chloroplasts, thus no chlorophyll. In this it would be like the bright pink, yellow and orange grafted cactus lollipops, which cannot survive unless grafted onto a cactus with chlorophyll. It appears Ficus benjamina has no other pigment.

If this is the case, it will be unable to make food for itself if separated from a plant that does have chlorophyll, and the white shoot would die.

It would survive grafted onto another Ficus plant with green leaves that would provide it food. Maybe now is the time for you to learn or polish up on grafting?

[cjm3fl]

Interesting thought about having no chloroplasts.
I'll have to look into that.

I have several books on Bonsai and they all have instructions on grafting.
I've never tried it but I can grow a green Ficus cutting just by throwing in some dirt (it seems) and I like the idea of giving graphing a try.

I'm going to leave it attached for now. The tree it's growing on is doing fine...too fine actually. I have to trim it back to being only 6 foot.

Thanks for you input.
Very insightful!

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I don't know how rare it is for the variegated ones to throw all-white branches, but I would probably take the time to learn how to graft Ficus like a champ before approaching anything rare. And I would only take off pieces the first few times, until I got some to take.

[Paphluvr]

One of my variegated hoyas did something like this. The leaves were normally pinkish white and green in good light, but every now and then it would throw a new stem with all white leaves. The blooms appeared normal on either. I was tempted to take a cutting of the all white stems to see if they would continue to thrive on their own but I hated to sacrifice them if they wouldn't and I liked the way the plant looked with them.

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Sometimes white-leaved branches have just the tiniest bit of chlorophyll, and can survive on their own. These can grow extremely slowly because there isn't much green tissue to make food.

[epiphyte78]

I love Ficus trees but have never heard of an all white variety. It doesn't seem likely that it would survive for very long. Personally, I'd probably plant the entire tree in the ground and prune off some of the other branches. The goal would be to encourage the growth of the all white branch. Maybe you could end up with a tree with two main branches... one variegated and the other all white. That would be eye catching. Before it got too large... you could dig it up and whittle it down to fit whichever pot size you wanted. Most Ficus are tolerant of considerable whittling. Especially benjamina.

I also love orchids so I'd definitely attach one or two... or three... smallish orchids to the Ficus. Knowing that I was going to attach orchids to it would guide how I whittled it.

A couple years ago I sawed off a Y-shaped branch from my Ficus lutea. It was a pretty thick branch... maybe twice as thick as your benjamina's trunk. I trimmed off most of the leaves and stuck it in a 15 gallon pot with some well drained medium. Once I was sure that it had rooted... I attached some epiphytes to it... a couple Cattleyas, Laelia anceps and a few Tillandsias. And now it's a phorobana!

I'm planning on giving it away... all the epiphytes are duplicates. But if I kept it then I'd gradually expose more and more of the trunk and roots. I'm sure there'd be enough space for another orchid!

The first phorobana I ever made was with a Ficus macrophylla. It's in a large bonsai dish and has quite a few epiphytes on it... including Dendrobium delicatum. The orchid is definitely not proportional. Its leaves are larger than the Ficus's leaves. But the Ficus is definitely more interesting than a plain ole dead wooden mount... and way more interesting than a pot!

My only complaint about Ficus as phorobanas is that their bark is too smooth for sowing orchid seeds. Well... I'm guessing that it's too smooth for orchid seeds to really stick to. For a while now I've been keeping my eyes open for a tree or shrub with rough bark that can be easily grown from large cuttings. So far I haven't found any real winners. Then again, it's not like I've tried very many rough barked cuttings.

Maybe next spring I'll ask the LA Arboretum if I can conduct an experiment trying to grow some of their rough barked trees from large cuttings.