If you have plants for awhile, you may have an occasional "bifurcated" leaf. That just means it split, like conjoined twins.
I've noticed before that Rhapsodie Farrah loves to throw fully split leaves that are joined at the stem. Something I do consistently apparently bugs her. And honestly, her leaves are so regal, I actually love it, and haven't bothered trying to alleviate it. Well this time, we have conjoined triplets!
*Pink dots indicate the leaves. Full size and perfect, just crowded. Arrows point to that chonker of a stem.
by ScoogyShoes
1 Comment
I haven’t seen this before, it is really interesting.
I think things like this, things where you see odd growth patterns, are caused by how commercial AVs are rapidly farmed. They are grown by tissue culture, or micro propagation, where a cutting is taken and then divided out so you basically have just have a few cells growing in a medium, instead of a whole leaf that grows in soil or water. This is done in a sterile environment, and produces thousands of plants at a time.
I think this process is increasing the amount of mutations or sports we see. Personally, I used to not see a lot of African violets that grew any pups, but now I have several that do it often. They are all newer purchases, at least the last 5 years.
The same thing might be why we’re seeing more leaf mutation growth, where you see basically new plants sprout from the edge of a leaf. You can see some recent posts in this sub about these.
I think all this has to do with the rapid growth of thousands of these plants. They are even probably breeding for the ones that divide out faster.
So this leaf division would fall in line with this pattern of odd growth.
Just my 2 cents.