During our time gardening we encounter various new or strange plants, mutant plants, weird but strangely beauty. I called these plant "The X-Plants"… Some of this plant stay with us, but many disappears, without ever shared with others… I believes, other member have had this encounters too, something weird, or something new.

Few of this plants are my encounter in the wilds, or a sport in the garden, so it is exclusively in my collection, but most are plants I bought, or was shared by friends, it might be something usual enough for others, but it is certainly new for me.

Just to day, I found two new plants while hiking on rural area of my town,
So… I think, I would like to start a thread showing those X-Plants, in case in the future these plants disappear, at least it has been shared.

I would love to invite others to join and share their mutant plants here… please share yours too, anything you find strange or "New to You", …

Here is a Colocasia esculenta I just found to day, from a distance it was just like normal plant, but up-close you will see it is variegated, It looks like 'Lemon Lime Gecko' Colocasia, but with obscure variegation, the stem is also striped…
Plant; Colocasia esculenta 'unnamed -yet'
Powers and abbilities; obscure chimeral variegation, striped petioles




This one also a new encounter just today, on the other site of the town, also with faint variegation.
Plant; Xanthosoma sagitifolia 'unnamed -yet'
Powers and abilities; chimeral whitish variegation


So what is your new strange plant..?, new collection, or new mutant… would really love to see them.

That Colocasia looks very much like an old cultivar called Chicago Harlequin

Ahhh,.. so there was a similar plant to that Colocasia, and it was named, so I guess it is worth to grow right..?, thanks @Gina1960. Often times, I have reluctance to grow non-so-obvious mutant plant, feeling that others will just comment, "well it just like "normal common plant".
That Colocasia grow in a swamp among many normal kind wild colocasia, it was a public site, near a sewage, so I can have it. a park cleaners was commenting to me while I was taking picture and digging few tuber.
she said; "what is that for?, I don't think those kind are edible kind of talas. (talas is local name of colocasia)
I replied " it is for the garden, isn't it beauty...
she just grinned..."really??....hmmm maybe"
me...

It was extremely popular here for a period of time about 2004 or so. I have it growing in my yard now, I used to have an absolutely HUGE stand of it but last fall wild boar rooted a lot of it up. I am waiting to see if it will regrow.

Wow you can take plants out of the wild? Here in Florida if they see you taking ANYTHING ANYWHERE even out of a ditch they will give you a fine.

Ahh, Wild boar is a problem here too in my garden, as well as squirrels.

Plants grows wild in public area is fine to be taken here, I guess in that case we are lucky, unless it is intentionally planted by authorities its OK to take out. In any case of doubt, I just ask officer, and in all cases I had, they will say go ahead.

Fasciation is among weird mutation I am really fond of. but I only have very few at the moment
Here are few new comers to my garden, so they are currently in "The X-zone", once propagated, their "X" status will be lifted, and they can be shared with friends or trade with other gardener around my area.
This is a Cristated Rikki Dracaena, the stem is quite large, and is currently my most favorite Dracaena, the scale pattern on the stem screams "dragon-scale' to me.


This one is a Janet Craic compacta cristata. It is still a short cutting, so there is not much to show for the stem yet

If you like Croton, perhaps this one could be loved, a cristated Codiaeum variegatum, no Idea of the original cultivar


If you have a "New to you" plant or any uncommon mutant please share here, would really love to see other's.

Wow those are very cool! I think that Florida has the laws it does because people will rob nature blind here. We have a few native orchids, Encyclia tampensis, also the leafless caneless Ghost Orchid, that were collected almost to extinction in the wild by collectors. And here in the more Northernly part of the state the Oak Leaf Hydrangea was a native plant that was collected the same way...people would just go out into the woods and dig them up and take them home. And there is a certain cactus that only grows in the Florida Keys that is critically endangered by collectors taking them from the wild. So I can see the point. But at the same time, I have seen beautiful stands of aquatic plants like lizard tail, horsetail rush, even water lilies, that have just been mowed down by the department of transportation with no regard. And if you plant an ornamental plant on the easement under an overhead power line, they will remove it in a lot of cases.

In the holidays I love to watch out for public garden worker and road cleaner, usually they work at Sunday, They will just removed any plants considered "offensive" as plants growing near the power-line. some time those are plants I desire much.... so it will be a free treat... Last week I got some grammatophyllum orchid also some lecanopteris fern nesting on a huge mahogany tree that were being cut down since it reaches the electric lines, I am so lucky to be at the "crime-site" exactly at the moment...

There are some popular variegated plants nowadays being tag "mint-variegated", a transient/transitional type variegation, where the young leaves are white or 'albino' and gradually become greener, Philodendron 'Florida ghost' is one the example that is bit common. There are mint-variegated-Monstera Deliciosa with sky high price, but it surely is beautiful.

Here are few mint type variegated X-plants of mine.
a Scindapsus sp... no ID

a Scindapsus Beccary

and a Raphidophora hayi, with tiny leaves

You are very very lucky! Yeah the 'mint' craze just defeats me. Florida Ghost is a nice climbing Philo, I have one I got in a trade (would never have paid the going price for it) but the variegation is transient. The time I find it at its most interesting is when it has 4 sequential leaves on the plant at once that are in varying stages of reverting from white to green.

I have a bird nest anthurium that has transient variegation. If it was stable and stayed it would be great but it always reverts

Yes indeed, many variegation in Anthurium is transient, perhaps that is why some are not as popular compared to variegated Philo (in my opinion though). I just lost an Anthurium vittarifolium this month with that transient variegation, but unsure whether I want to get another one of that at this moment
Here is another transient variegated Anthurium... it is a A. bonplandii hybrid

There are many stable form too, but it seems to be harder to get as the crave on aroid is still on the air.
Here is an A. andreanum,

This one is actually not so rare, since the variegation is genetically inherited through seeds, so there are stock that always circulating in the market, however it is a slow grower, It is an A. jenmanii, I think I will cut it, since I am not good in taking care of seedling.

I had a variegated A. vittarifolium and it was transient. I still have it, but its not variegated anymore LOL.

I love your plants! The variegated things here sell for huge amounts. Everyone wants anything that is variegated. I like variegated stuff but not enough to spend the kind of money on them that they are being sold for.

I like species plants myself....hybrids are nice but so are plain old species plants. I just figured out with the help of some other aroid peeps that the big mystery anthurium I have had for so long and not known what it is is Anthurium Big Splash, a hybrid between A. spectabile x A. watermaliense. The leaves on my arrest specimens are currently approaching 3 feet, and with the Spectabile parentage I can probably expect them to get much much longer.

Argh,....@Gina1960 that is WOW, would love your hybrid, the bigger leaves, the better right... (most of time )
Nowadays, here, the star on Anthurium stage is on the "velvety-heart-shape-cardiolonchium-section-hybrid, like those of Crystalinum-magnificum kind. The jenmanii-plowmanii birdnest kind is somewhat loose popularity.
Those kind hybrid like your "big splash' surely will sell high here, if it available, since it so rare now to see non Crystallinum, non bird nest family here.
Me too prefer species one, but a unique hybrids with reasonably prize will be welcome..(budget wise), but yes, species rank the first option to me.
The "rare-non-mutant" species in my garden I call "RED-LIST", but they should be non mutant. they are not necessarily rare some where else, just rare in my garden... some of my Red-list will be just weed to other collector.
some plant are pure species but also a mutant and "rare in my garden" so they have double citizenship
here are some
a Raphidophora foraminifera


This is another form of R foraminifera, the variegation is subtle,


This is a Raphidophora megasperma, this one has stable variegation, but slow grower. The wild type R megasperma is somewhat slower too, compared to R. foraminifera wild type

Rhaphidophora species like those are hard to find here. They haven't really gotten into the market yet widespread. There are a few that are more available.

I know what you mean by the velvet leaved heart shape ones are the most popular....here as well among 'newer' growers. They are paying high prices for them too. I collected the ones like that that I have years ago when they were cheap. Now these younger people think they have to have one of everything even if they look almost exactly the same. And where they get the $$ to buy them I have NO idea.

I bought Big Splash years ago, it was mislabeled as Anthurium pseudospectabile. When I found that it was not THAT, I started trying to get it identified and finally I did. I can see the parents in it, spectabile for the length and width but watermaliense for the split sinus and heart shaped auricles.

Yeah... oh why these "newer collectors"... they made plants price becoming out of my reach..
But may be we have to use them... they will buy your plant's without second thoughts
Just, better not sell the hard-to care plants to them, since most of time they will carefully kill it..

I have my nursery license again so I can sell plants to most states. There are a few I can't. But the last time my Anthurium vittarifolium made berries I sold them for over $200. Just for the berries. And I was selling CHEAP. I saw after me that someone was selling Anthurium bakeri berries for twice what I sold mine for and that's a much more common species. SO next time I will double my price for seeds.

I have been propagating some things to sell believe me. By selling some things I can buy new things myself.

I have a friend here who has been a 'plant friend' for over 20 years. We both think that this is a fad. this aroid collecting, that will fade over time. Once everyone has a plant of everything and there is nothing new and exciting coming out to the market, they will look for something else to buy

Ahh, congrats on that license Gina...,
Yes everything will be fade, that's why we should never stop at one point... but the wonder is, that the old can be the new again...
I am starting to taking care of my old plants again, many I've never seen much in the market nowadays, so I guess I will have enough excitement whatever the popularity will be on the air.
I start growing things from seeds again, especially Anthurium andreanum, since this is among of my first plant I ever have, the old form of A andreanum I had was even been in our home long before I was born... and nowadays in my country most gardener focusing on leafy plants, I need to take another way to be different.
Here is few of my fav andreanums, that may be a little bit odd enough....
This one has an elongated form, with bicolor purple-green spathe, medium size 15x25 cm


This one is a small flowered, 4x5 cm, a Japanese hybrid. the spadix are also small and short, stubby, and the bumpy structure on the spadix under magnification is actually a spathe kind of structure, (almost like a phyllody mutation). this one is sterile, as there was no pollen and there is no stigma as well. The spadix reminds me of mini-corn or strawberry (or strawberry corn)



This one is an obake type, but the plants over all some what dwarf, only flower size is huge, 20x30 cm, and the spadix is so tiny, this one I found growing on tree trunk 5m above the ground in my garden. some critter certainly brings the seed and left it there, no idea which one is the hairy-gardener one was, as we has lots of critter here, bats, birds, squirrels, shrews, and others



The finding of this new dwarf obake one made me think that I need to sow any of ripened seeds, this will provide me enough fun in the future years to come.

I have some Obakes and a few andreanums. I have never been able to get mine to make seeds! A lot of my species Anthuriums do but not my andreanums

Theese are Xanthosoma sagitifolia, the edible malanga. tuber is popular for cooking, I love the fried chips made of their tuber. they can grow huge if planted on garden directly on soil
This one is a white variegated

this one has dark cast on the leaves and petiole, almost similar but not as dark as X violaceum

This one is my own finding, at my neighbour garden, few years ago, I thought it was gone killed by porcupines, but last year I got one plant survive, a bright yellow splashed variegated

Lovely. I have the white variegated form but have never seen the others. Maybe I should buy some Malanga from th grocery and plant them I might get lucky. I did that years ago and got several X. violacum out of it

When ever I walk and saw a stand of X violaceum, I always wish to find a true dark violaceum with variegation... it will be nice to have black and white. only wishful thinking, but hey...sometimes we got lucky...