I bought a beautiful and strange Adenium last Monday, this adenium has a lot of branches and the size of the leaves are very small, normal adenium leaves are 6 to 10 cm, this one is 0.5 to 1 cm, as you can see in the photo, side by side comparison with my other baby adenium. The seller said this one is 4 to 5 years old, roughly 6 inch tall.



Further researched show that the species is Adenium petit(e) green, and another species Adenium Magic Red Dragon that has exactly the same characteristics.
They are the creation of Suttikarn Jiamrattanaprateep (Mr. Koong) from Thailand ( people here appreciate him as father of Adeniums, like TCT of aloes). While searching for this species, I found information that this species was infected by virus, eventhough Mr. Koong said that he made this by applying radiation to the plant.

Why we said this is a virus infected species, because if we graft this species to other rootstock, the characteristics can spread to the mother plant, the rootstock will become multibranches and all leaves will become small. There was one nursery in Indonesia said that he get rid of all those species, worried that the virus will infect the rest of his adeniums.

Not much information that I can find about them, this website has some information, in Russion language, need the browser to automatically translate the content into English. https://adenium.ucoz.ru/publ/7...

There are 2 questions that I am not very clear:
- Is the virus transmission at the plants airborned ?
- What is the chance that the virus transmitted to other genus like fruits, cactus & other succulents ?

I am not worry too much on the virus transmissions, just want to understand and be ready, infact next year I will try to infect the virus into some plants that I want to make into bonsai. Have traced the information on this species back to the news in 2007, so far did not see any scary story in the last 15 years. It is still considered rare plant here, the market price also quite high, 10 times of multi-petalled adeniums.

While searching the information, I also find out that a lot of variegated plants also because of virus infection. If we keep the variegated plants without worry, then we should not be too worry about this plant also.

I have no idea how virus is transmitted in adeniums. I assume by the same ways as virus is transmitted in orchids which are my favorites.

In orchids, transmission depends upon what type of virus it is.
Transmission can be spread directly by touch. You touch a plant with virus in your collection and then you touch other plants without sterilizing your fingers.
Virus has also been known to be transmitted by splashing tiny water droplets.
Virus can by spread by failure to sterilize garden tools. Pruners, clippers and scissors are the most common tools used.
Years ago one could spread tobacco mosaic virus as a cigarette smoker. The virus could be on a smokers fingers and if they come to my greenhouse and touch my orchid flowers, just like people tend to do, they leave the virus behind.
One small consolation is a big drop in the numbers of smokers.

One prevalent theory in orchids pertains to Cattleyas. Some plants and their descendants have had virus in them for 70-80 years. It doesn't really manifest itself right away. It might take a year or two before it can been seen by us. By then, without knowing, you could spread it everywhere!!!
Viruses are not really curable so for me personally, I assume that it is always present. It does not bother me.

Those are interesting questions but I don't have the academic knowledge to give any meaningful answers. Some thoughts, having actually worked on/with animal viruses in a past life.

Our genome (and presumably that of many other species) contains DNA for a great number of endogenous viruses. These sequences are usually defective (ie. do not code for a working virus) but they can be recognized as viral in origin. Presumably they exist as a result of some evolutionary accident (having integrated in a chromosome near a gene that was important enough to conserve). Very complicated story there, as you can imagine, but it is entirely possible for radiation to render an endogenous virus active by reverting whatever was defective about it.

Thus the two explanations for how the mutant cultivar arose are not necessarily mutually exclusive, if that makes any sense. Functionally the result is the same, and the concerns about contagion are justified in any case.

With any potentially contagious life form around my plants, I generally assume that proximity implies higher relative risk. So basically the probability of that organism hopping to another plant goes inversely with distance, or to be more precise some power of distance. This is more soft logic than anything based in data or study.

Intimate contact is required for many animal viruses to transmit, and I would imagine plant viruses work the same. Viruses do not have particularly robust packaging that survives long periods out in the real world. The transmission you have described involves intimacy of the highest kind (vascular contact). Though in other cases there is often an intermediate carrier involved (eg. fleas, rats; flying insects, pollinators) in transmission of pathogens, complicating things.

Bottom line is if this famous guy with the long name identified the mutant cultivar and kept it, he probably didn't find all the other plants around it were coming down with the same condition. Or we would probably have heard about it. A theoretical risk of transmission is very different from a real observed one. When in doubt take all precautions. Whenever I can't identify what's causing my plants to grow differently, in a (potentially) bad way of course, I generally assume it is contagious until proven otherwise.

As my name implies, we are into growing Orchids.
Virus infections in Orchids is a major issue. Primarily it affects the orchid flower and causes 'color break' which means the flowers appear splotchy and sometimes deformed. Mostly the flower becomes more ugly each time a new one opens until we throws away the plant.
There is no known cure for virus.
Another virus symptom in orchid plants is stripes and/or creases on the leaves. Not a desirable variegation, but a deformity. Eventually the health of the plant deteriorates and the growth rate diminishes and the flower production drops.
Dirty clippers are the most common way to transfer virus from one plant to another. Orchid growers have learned to flame their clippers between uses. Bugs can transmit virus from one plant to another.
We have learned to throw away any suspicious plant. Test kits are available for several of the more common viruses. But there are too many kinds of virus and most do not show with the common tests.
@Baja made a good point: Mr Koong grew this cultivar without infecting other plants around it. So it probably is not a virus but rather some other genetic mutation.
Virus will always spread through contact.

Thanks a lot for all the inputs and information. I feel much better now.
If one type of virus can create certain mutation, in this case make the plant has small leaves, can I assume that it will give the same result if the virus infected to other plants, even plants from other genus / family? Assuming that the virus can contaminate and live in other plants?

I don't know how far you can extrapolate with the effects of a virus on related plants. It could cause the same effects, it could cause different ones, it could cause none, it could be unable to infect any plant other than an Adenium grafted to it. Of course you should be watchful for the small leaf phenotype, given what you already know, but my guess is that you won't see anything.

A plant "virus" does not automatically equal a threat to health. Various variegated plants that people know and love are variegated because of a virus. If it was possible for that type of viral variegation to spread, wouldn't all of my plants be variegated? All of them occasionally get trimmed with the same little scissors that I've had for over 20 yrs. From my limited knowledge to date, various viruses spread in various ways.

I'm not sure enough info is known, or at least yet added to this discussion, to evaluate the potential harm, or potentially desirability of the alleged virus of Adenium being discussed here.

https://www.actahort.org/books...
http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/GARDE...

https://apsjournals.apsnet.org...
There are enough citations in that article to probably take weeks to read

https://www.lsuagcenter.com/po...

An old patent for creating variegated plants through chlorophyll inhibition. Was this ever put into practice?
https://patents.google.com/pat...

I think it's also worth considering that there are many mechanical means that can influence the size and shape of a plant and its foliage. With nothing more sophisticated than a fingernail, one can cause foliage size to shrink by at least half, depending on the plant. Cramped roots, drought, out-of-acceptable-range PH, other conditional variations can also influence growth rates. The only indication that a virus is involved, from what I see here, is that some guy said he used it. Where did he get it? Why would he do something that could compromise his nursery? The story of this plant is alleged, and not believable to me, yet anyway, without more info.

Also worth considering that if the plants on earth were in danger from a "shrinking virus," it would be something people are talking about. That would be a big deal.

Agree, I think if the virus can easily spread to other plants, we should have heard about it. Have repot this plant into a better soil, hope it doesn't gone dormant. The original media is 100% husk coal.