hey!

recently i found this gal at a grocery store, over here it can be pretty hard to find philodendron pink princess, so even tho it was a very ugly specimen, i just jumped in and bought it lmao

however, i know that these plants can size up and get way more variegated than this, so i was wondering, how do i make this gal become big and beautiful?

If the plant doesn't have the genetics to have a lot of pink and/or a lot of variegation, it simply won't have it.
There's nothing you as the grower can do to change what the plant has in its genetic make up.

It looks recoverable! I'd have bought it, too.
Maybe a slight upsize on the pot, with better mix?

There's nothing wrong with it. She just thinks its ugly because its pretty low variegation and mostly not pink

Gina, mine was green and pink then it slowly turned brownish with pink variegation. The all pink leaf coming along here will probably die off for lack of chlorophyl.

Yes, yours is expressing itself. The variegation on PPP is chimeric mericlinal. The mutated cells causing the pink do not extend through all the cell layers of the meristem, and can be sporadically arranged on the meristem. There is generally only one cell genotype...either pink, green (or white or yellow in other plants) that occupies an actual pretty small part of the outer cell layers. The ratio of one can be much higher than the other. This makes this type of variegation extremely unstable. It can come and go, or it can totally disappear.

The mutations causing the big patches of variegation are the most unstable. The 'marbled' PPP that they are producing now in TC is more stable, compared it like a Monstera Thai Constellation (stable) and a Monstera albo-variegata (unstable)

Mine is a cutting from a cutting from an original plant I bought at least 8 years ago.

I have one of those lol

I'm still on the look out for the marbled PPP, haven't seen one yet. Funny, I see tons of the PPP everywhere now, even in grocery stores, most don't look real impressive to me.

You have to be kind of a hawkeye. They were getting a ton of PPP's at Home Depot a month or so ago and most were not at all impressive. You kind of have to search through them and see if you can find one stuck down in the mix. I found 2 that were highly variegated/marbled, one had 3 great plants in one container, the other had 2 plants one was great one mediocre. I bought them both so I could put multiple plants on one support and have a really full display. I separated them and potted them all up alone as soon as I got them home because Costa's soil is shit. I still have to make the new support LOL. These are the 4 good ones







Many people agree that these new TC 'marbled' plants look really different from the old school PPP's of the past. The leaf shape is different....more narrow, less round and less broad. And of course the variegation is pretty different. The old school plants had a really really high amount of large patch sectorial variegation compared to these new ones. They had such a high complete reversion rate to all pink that a lot of people just gave up and tossed them after they had tried cutting them back before the reversion a few times and gotten...more reversion. I tossed a few back in the day.






These new marbles did do through a couple iterations in TC before they got these. They started making what they called 'dark PPP' (breeding in more green and less pink) that tended to look brick red and have very little pink. Most people thought these were really ugly and would not buy them. It looks like they finally got it to a better state.

Don't give up, you will find a good one, and at $19.95 you won;t be able to beat it

If you see some that are labeled 'MARBLE PRINCESS' don;t be confused. This is just the regular PPP, that they are sticking a new name on and trying to get people to think that it's a different plant.

SOme non-box store places (and ETSY and INSTAGRAM sellers) have tried to capitalize on this. They are being the regular highly patterned PPP's and reselling Tham as 'MARBLE' for a lot more $$$. The other ploy is 'BLACK CHERRY' PPP. These are just regular ones that happen to have a very dark background for the pink to pop on

All good info, thanks Gina. Nice looking PPPs too. I'm glad to know others feel the same about Costa's potting soil.

It is interesting, I have seen Costa growing farms all over NC, SC and FL. Surely there are some in GA and elsewhere but I have not seen them. I wonder if they all use the same potting medium.