Variegation, on the rise at my farm

[secuono]

I've now seen two wild plants with it.

One is a dock, the other I haven't IDed yet.

I tried to pot the dock, but the dirt I used turned out to be heavy clay...

Any ideas on what causes it?
Could I pot them and use their seeds in hopes of creating variegated versions of them?
Has anyone done this with wild plants?
Anyone know what the first plant is?

 

[secuono]

Oh, the dock put out a new leaf! Normal type, though. At least I didn't kill it.

 

[digitS']

Secuono,

I can only say that one of the tomato varieties that I save seed from produces a few variegated seedlings. The seedlings are characteristically weaker than their sisters of the same variety so I don't choose to grow those out.

On another forum, a gardener is hoping to develop one of her hand-pollinated tomatoes into a successful strain. Her pictures of the mature plants don't encourage me to change my thinking on the ones that show up here at home but she seems enthusiastic enough to have carried this project through several years.

Steve

 

[heirloomgal]

I've now seen two wild plants with it.

One is a dock, the other I haven't IDed yet.

I tried to pot the dock, but the dirt I used turned out to be heavy clay...

Any ideas on what causes it?
Could I pot them and use their seeds in hopes of creating variegated versions of them?
Has anyone done this with wild plants?
Anyone know what the first plant is?

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I grow a few vegetable plants @secuono that have variegated leaves, one pepper and a few tomatoes. I also grow the perennial 'Pulmonaria' which has variegation. I don't know a lot of the super scientific details about that phenomenon but as far as I am aware it can be the result of a few different things. In my pepper and tomatoes, it is a cell mutation that occurred somewhere in the history of that plants genetic line and it was preserved through selection, choosing offspring which continue that trait. Some lines are probably more likely to have it. My variegated 'Fish Pepper' originated (apparently) from a 'Serrano' pepper long ago. I believe it, now, because I have seen variegation spontaneously occur in some Serrano seedlings I once grew, though they didn't survive.

However, it can also be caused by a virus. I think it's called Viral Variegation and is some kind of mosaic. There is probably a difference between whether the plant grew like that from a seedling on, or whether it started to variegate after it was a more mature plant.