I found this at Lowe's for a deal and grabbed it up as it was the only one in the pile that looked like this.The flowers are that candy stripe look-faint pink around the edges, then white with the red eyes. Most of the leaves have the white variegation except for the bottom two branches.
I am wondering if I should prune the solid green growth or just leave it alone until next year.
Here's another shot where you can see the contrast of the solid green against the variegation. The two lower branches are the biggest and fullest.
I would prune out the green stuff, with these variegated plants the green is often a more robust stronger grower than the variegated parts, so if you don't prune it out, it can take over. I don't know on your hibiscus specifically, but that's often true for other variegated plants. The other possibility is that the plant is grafted and the green is coming up from the rootstock, if that's the case I would still prune it out because the rootstock is probably more vigorous than the grafted top and before you know it, the variegated part will be crowded out.
You really think it will be ok to prune it that hard now when it's gonna die back in a couple of months? Sorry to ask a question, then debate the answer, I'd hate to kill the thing before fall, though.
I just checked, the plant is not grafted, I think it's just a freak.
It's not a freak, grafted plants can send up shoots from the rootstock, but variegated plants that aren't grafted can still put out branches that revert to the original green. Some plants are more prone to reversion than others. The best thing to do is prune out the branches that have reverted to green, otherwise they'll tend to grow faster than the variegated branches and take over. The other possibility if you have green and variegated leaves on the same branch is that the variegation is sensitive to temperature or amount of sunlight--I don't know anything about this one, but I have a variegated Melia azederach tree, and the new leaves that come out in the spring when the weather's cool show the variegation very nicely, but as the weather warms up the variegation mostly disappears (I was a little disappointed to find this out...wish I would have read the plant description more closely before I bought it!)
Thanks ecrane, the bottom two branches are the only green ones, so I guess I'll prune them and maybe try to root them. I really appreciate the help.
