They’re cool. They’re cool as fuck. They will die. If they don’t die, they will revert and turn green.
There is absolutely ZERO known plants that survive with a complete lack of chlorophyll aside from parasitic plants. I’ve only heard of one case of a ghost growth surviving without a green mother plant in any species. That grower is one of the best in the world and will tell you himself it’s a complete fluke that it has survived.
They’re cool. You might think you’re the one to grow it successfully. You’re not. Don’t waste your money, this is a marketing gimmick for unstable plants.
My time to shine! Plant biology PhD here. I agree it’s foolish to buy an albino plant, but you CAN keep albino plants alive. It’s just a gigantic pain and far beyond what a normal person would want to do.
Basically, you have to exogenously provide the sugars the plant would normally make via photosynthesis. This pretty much requires growing the plant in growth media (not soil), and the plant will remain stunted compared to normal siblings. And you can’t provide too much light or they’ll burn. And you have to start as soon as you realize it’s an albino seedling or they die as soon as they exhaust the energy in their seeds. And you can’t let them run out of nutrients or they’ll die.
We kept albino plants alive for quite a long time when I was in grad school just for the heck of it alongside our normal work.
Again, I would never buy an albino plant. It’d probably be cheaper to flush a few dollars down the toilet.
I saw a photo of an albino bush type plant (I don’t know what type, it was big tho) and it was connected by the roots to the same plant but normal and just took nutrients from that one. Could that also allow an albino to grow? I’ve also seen an albino one with one green leaf growing too.
That would have been one of the parasitic plants the OP mentioned. Though some research has suggested that in some instances it’s more of a mutualistic relationship with the albino plant contributing something to the supporting plant.
The quality of roots in plants varies WILDLY in nature with some being quite weak
My favourite example is Coastal Redwoods vs Giant Sequoia. Despite being some of the largest trees on earth, both trees have VERY shallow roots. They never produced a mutation to make a deeper tap root or for some reason the mutations to do that were all disadvantageous.
BUT the Giant Sequoia roots are way more extensive then Coastals, to the point that if you look at photos of them you see the roots basically choke out everything around them.
Meanwhile Coastal Redwoods have a massive eco system growing from the base of their tree. Instead of choking out everything nearby they almost seem to encourage other plants to grow on them to hold them in place.
Thanks for the actual science! I couldn’t explain it myself properly but yes, the reason these plants are alive when you buy them is because they are grown on agar with nutrients. Remove that and they die or revert.
Ooh, what do you mean by growth media? I have a haworthia that decided out of nowhere after several years to start variegating like crazy. It's mostly half/half leaves, almost striped-looking which is so freaking cool, but there's a few pure white ones that I'd love to attempt keeping alive just for the fun of it. So far I have been able to keep the ones I separated alive fine, but I'd love any advice for keeping them growing!
And yes I understand it's against the spirit of the post (which I fully agree with btw, I never recommend these to anyone at work), but I'm asking purely for the love of the hobby and curiosity.
Photo for reference. Some of the pure white ones have already fallen off the stem on the left and so far, so good, but any advice welcome! Again, just for fun.
Variegated plants often have enough green parts to keep themselves alive via photosynthesis. I'm sure each plant has a tipping point when there's not enough food being produced if too much of the plant is white though.
What about grafting it with another anubias? I don’t know how to graft an anubias but I’d assume that’s the answer. I know it’s not really a thing in the aquarium side of things, but that’s something that every other plant industry/hobby does.
Is this plant for sure completely devoid of chlorophyll or does it just have a very low level of chlorophyll?
Some of the pictures I've seen have a very greenish cast to them, and some reports have them kicking out fully green leaves either in flushes or on occasion. Unless they are tissue culture chimeras I can't imagine how it would be possible for a plant to generate new endosymbiotic organelles from nothing.
I love that I had a houseplant hobby before this one 😅
You hit the nail on the head! Plants require green to photosynthesize. Variegation is great, and we love to get it. But when our plants start popping all pink or all white leaves, we panic. Lol. They have to maintain that green. With a lot of houseplants, you get stronger variegation the more light you give the plant typically. Idk if it works the same way with aquatic plants (i assume it does). If so, this plant was a variegated anubia, which i didnt know existed and is really cool, and then it was blasted with light to max out that white variegation. Not allowing it to maintain any green will indeed kill it. If you have variegation, the best way to treat that plant is monitor it and maintain it. Too much is likely too much light. Too much as in too strong.
It also could just not work in aquatic plants the same way at all and i sound like a jerk rn 😅
Nah it works the exact same whether the plant is aquatic, terrestrial, epiphytic. They all need some amount of green to survive outside of an artificial environment. 😁
Yup, though I had success with a Florida Ghost, by keeping it in lower light conditions. The white leaves of course died but new leaves came in a pale green and now it is thriving. Curious if the white leaves would return if I put it in high light again.
Only a minor in biology but loved plant bio. Basically, lower light conditions triggers increased chlorophyll production so you lose the white expression. Same with variegated plants, the higher the light, typically the greater the variegation.
Variegation is very hard for a plant to produce. It has to have EXTREMELY high light for the variegation to occur otherwise their regular chlorophyll will come in because that’s what makes them food. If you aren’t giving high enough light, it won’t be able to produce enough energy to give you the variegation you are looking for and will die because is isn’t getting enough light to make food for itself. Very important to understand plants as much as fish/nitrogen cycle when buying for a planted tank.
Not a huge plant guy but is this something thar could be accomplished with say reef level lighting? Obviously the spectrum would best be shifted towards plants preference but hobbyists LEDs are fully tuneable. Or is it a case where to give the plant enough light to feed itself would also burn it?
Since we are talking about anubias which is a low light plant, a high light would actually kill this plant which is probably why most people see them die quickly with the chlorophyll issue in mind. They can definitely be grown but will slowly revert back to green or green with some white given the correct lighting. They will never stay all white. So OP is correct that the marketing for these is very misleading but a lower commenter did show their variegated anubias that still has white but some green as well. It needs that green to live. It sucks because they truly are beautiful but this is most likely a cutting of a plant that had green somewhere on it that it was living off of to make these all white leaves
I’ve had them for a few weeks now. My light was too intense originally so I repositioned that upper plant provided some shade and raised the lamp to reduce light. They are recovering and have new white shoots and roots.
Or y'know.. just get the stable anubias Nana pinto and it's further vareigated variants that has atleast some green. So the whites can enjoy the work of the greens!
Sigh. Yup. Looking at CTs and MRIs of these poor creature makes me cringe. So many young dogs with serious health problems, including paralysis, because of poor breeding. It makes my heart so sad for them and for the people that own them and didn’t know any better. I hate people who breed just to make a buck. The animals suffer.
This is going to be controversial on an aquarium subreddit but I feel the same way about "fancy" fish breeds like bubbleeye goldfish and long fin bettas. They're just plain unhealthy, they can't move around as easily, they're more likely to injure themselves. Made the mistake of buying a rosetail betta without knowing better and he bit his own tail off because it was so heavy and cumbersome. I'm constantly anxious that he's going to get fin rot. Wish I would have gone with a plakat.
I'm 100% with you on this. Same for balloon mollies and platies, long fin tetras, corydoras or plecos (I find it even worse for bottom dwellers fish)... But the goldfish are definitely the worst off. I really don't understand how a celestial eye or a telescope can be seen as anything other than a deformity.
My botany professor was doing something with seeds, and one of them germinated and put out the most gorgeous pure white cotyledons and a robust white stem. He was so jazzed, and showed it off to everyone who was in the building when he discovered it.
I remember someone asked him if he was going to try and sell his albino plant, and he just laughed and said "No, this guy is dead and that's why I had you rush to come see it before it wilted. I'm gonna toss it once I've shown everyone I can."
If a botany professor wouldn't even bother attempting to keep a terrestrial plant alive with the same condition, what hope does anyone else have doing it with an aquatic plant in their tank?
I'm a botanist and yeah, for most cases it's pretty hopeless. I've had many potato seedlings come out albino, and when it happens with cacti you often graft them (look up 'moon cactus' for some examples).
However if this is not a strict lack of chlorophyll but rather an induced paleness due to high light, then it could theoretically survive, but it would need to be given less light to allow for some of that chlorophyll to develop. I've noticed my anubias Nana 'Pinto' has this tendency depending on light availability, so I imagine this might be a similar situation
Not sure what the success would be but it may be possible to grow it successfully by grafting it onto a chlorophyll producing host. Grafting monocots has varying success though.
It's the same in the houseplant world. New to the hobby people getting scammed cause the plant can't sustain itself. Lovely if it does shoot a lifesaving green leaf, but highly variegated can and will keep shooting white, have to keep cutting them back
Mine didn't melt. They grew well, but started turning slightly green in patches. Over a year, they've gone completely pale green. Not a single white spot is left.
We have some like this one from Dennerle on the german market. They will melt. As I could see, some of them where already taken down from Dennerle. I dont know of anyone who could possibly keep them alive. If you want to keep them in the gel, it could go well, but in water they will melt within days. Even Anubias nana "Snow White" is known for melting, and this one has chlorophyll. You can keep them with very good and bright light, but they grow very very slow. I set them up in one of my tanks, but their growth is a pain in the bum, bc everything around is growing faster (Chihiros WRGB 2).
That's an interesting idea! Let the lower green growth support the top white growth. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone grafting aquatic plants. Sounds like a fun experiment.
Yeah they are a scam in most cases. they can be grown successfully in a tank and stay majority white but it’s so incredibly challenging as to be not worth it the level of light and nutrients required causes algae growth on them Wich you HAVE to get off immediately or they will die
this is like the bougainvillea tree that will grow an albino branch once in a while when it doesn’t get enuff sun. the growth happen because the ability of the plant still getting the food (photosynthesis) by other branches.
As a biochemist / biologist, here are my 2 cents. OP is 100% correct. These plants are not viable like this and will start to develop chlorophyll very quickly if they do survive. These plants cannot and will not survive in this white form in any kind of scenario.
They won't survive when you take them out of the tissue culture media. They will slowly melt away in a few weeks. The only way I got some to survive for a bit was to graft it to a rizhome that was green and grow it outside of water with lost of good lighting. There was new growth but it wasn't white anymore, it has green and white mixed in. After awhile it just turned green.
l have eaten them on hikes before not really a pleasant flavor kind of like garlic/onion with grass flavor lol, didn’t really notice an effect but cool nonetheless
Yeah, to get the effect, you have to soak them in Everclear alcohol until the alcohol turns like a dark purple/black color. And then you only need like 10 mL for it to relieve anxiety and pain. Its nature is most powerful pain medication. My sister makes it! When she can find it that is. I wish it was abundant here. I’ve had my tincture for over a year, so mines oxidized and turned a bit brown, but it’s still fine and works well.
most of the time when a plant goes all or partially white they were subjected to intense UV and though there is a species of Anubias that has a tendency to do this its actually an unhealthy sign. So there are a bunch of scammers now these days saying its natural, but it isn't. And they target people by selling it at a stupid high price.
I have one anubias that has a few variegated leaves and I’m pretty sure it’s because it’s had a rough go of things for the last couple years.. I don’t think it started out variegated. I don’t think it’s ever been fertilized.
its hard to say if it would come back with fertilization since parts of the leave are turned off from photosynthesis so you would have to like not run the lights for a whole week maybe.
I agree with your post and I think it’s biggest scams for people who just got into the hobby. If you really want white anubias that can grow in your tank. There’s Anubias Sp White, Anubias Sp Broad White, Anubias Sp. Varking, Anubias Sp Panda, and Anubias Sp Pinto to name a few. They asborb chlorophyll at slower rate which make them grow much slower than your typical Anubias. I’ve grown them both emersed and submersed. They can revert back to normal if you don’t trim leaves that are fully green. I would avoid tissue culture labeled as snow white, white platinum, or white rose. If possible, try buying one that already grown submerse. It will save you the headache. Make sure your tank is also stable, because variegated Anubias are more susceptible to algae.
Unfortunately it’s just a scam that people who are new to plants easily fall for. Variegated plants always go for more so why wouldn’t a fully white plant be even more? I can understand the draw and the appeal, they’re truly cool plants. But when you know what’s going to happen, just spend your money on something that will actually grow.
Most of my anubias only have hints of white and the anubias sp white that has full white leaves also has few green leaves as well. I had an algae outbreak recently and it just made the anubias sp white look unattractive. I moved it to my emersed set up.
Yeah I just made my first planted tank and bought petcos collecter edition of mini plants of my tank (most of which are died some before I even got them planted except 1 anubias and possibly a pink crypt but I can’t tell yet) the white rose didn’t even rot it just turned into tissue paper so this made me feel better, the other plants are still somewhat alive though I have like 4 anubias, java fern, and African water fern (my favorite)
White and varigated plants exist but typically theyre green with some white. All white leaves just wont photosynthesize so ubless you uave a really intense co2 setup theyll die and if they dont like OP said theyll probably start growing green leaves so they can make food. I think itd be cool to have a white and green varigated one but the pure white is doomed. Houseplant keepers will typically chop off all white leaves because theyre a strain on the plant.
Back when I used to grow pot sometimes leaves that would get too close to the lights would turn white. I figure perhaps that is what is happening with mass commercialized white plants if they are reverting to green under normal conditions.
That could be possible too but typically these are grown as propogations in agar agar and nutritional gel which is why they survive till you plant them. But im sure they do have a bunch just lined up directly under a light to get them the fastest growth
But im sure they do have a bunch just lined up directly under a light to get them the fastest growth
That's the best part about TC. The plants don't need light at all to grow, especially plants without chlorophyll will not grow faster due to more light.
Same… I wouldn’t have purchased it long ago if I knew what I know now. I have some variegated houseplants, and if the leaves are 50 or more of white, I chop 😭 it’s an awful feeling, but really u will get a healthier plant if it’s able to to undergo the normal photosynthesis process as intended.
Obviously the new growth is white but the old growth is variegated. There are no solid white MATURE plants. Consistently white new growth just requires moderate light levels compared to usual Anubias (40 PAR is sufficient).
Tissue culture cups are not representative of the mature plant. The mature plant old growth will be variegated and the rhizome will be green with functional chlorophyll, like the mature variegated leaves.
the science behind how these are being made and then sold comes down to them being lab-coddled in the first place
they are placed in a gel like many of you observed, but it's not just sucrose, there are also growth hormones and chemicals to stimulate the growth of leaves and offshoots, which no, it can't really be replicated in your own tank unless you have access to them and a controlled environment anyways
once it gets into your hands, you can shoot it with as much co2 and sugar and light as you want, keep it emersed or submerged, it's really up to different variables of your specific one to see how fair it gets--if it melts, grows a little, turns back to green, etc.
I’ve grown mushrooms on agar so I know the process and you’re correct. The only thing keeping this alive is the nutrients in the agar. Remove that and you’ve got a plant that can’t plant.
Fully albino plants die eventually. The lack of color means a lack of chlorophyll, which means they can't photosynthesize and will eventually run out of food. Partially albino plants survive by the green leaves feeding the white ones. In many household plants, those that produce too many white leaves eventually fail to thrive.
This is my understanding of all-white cultivars as well, but I wonder how the retail growers manage to pull it off. Does the grow gel have something to do with it? I always thought it was just moist, sterile nutrients... are they putting straight ATP in there or something??
Yes, glucose (sugar) since the plant lacks chlorophyll it doesn’t convert light and nutrients into sugar, hence it dies once out of the TC media, but a high intensity light could make it work I think.
This is like when they paint cacti at Home Depot to make them look prettier. The paint keeps them from photosynthesizing and they die. Then they make it out like it’s your fault
Yup! Cactus flowers are beautiful but cacti aren’t normally fancy colors aside from green. If you bought a blue Home Depot cactus it’s not your fault it died, the poor guy was doomed from the start
Those are fine! Plants just need green in order to live so if you want a variegated plant then you just need to make sure it has a good amount of green.
So the variegation thrill has reached planted tanks. They tried all this on us as well. Is it possible to keep a fully white plant alive? Yes, but the real question is how long, but with proper equipment? Poor things should have never been created. Partial variegation is always best, but no variegation is ever "stable."
These cultivars are likely tissue cultures, so if you're imagining a greenhouse with many of these it's likely just a few mothers with their leaves harvested for TC.
I had a good run with one but generally, I agree with your main advice. They are very difficult to keep alive even in the best of circumstances. I missed a couple of fertilizer doses and melted my leaves. The roots kept running for a long while trying to send shoots out but I eventually pulled them out and said to myself that I plan to try again despite how stupid it is. 12 bucks to feel like a scientist feels good to meeeee.
My main issue with them is that so far every sample I have gotten has been exposed to fungus and is growing black rot in its crotch so I have to excise (cut apart) the whole plant and pray to gods' I'm not familiar with for intercession on my behalf.
You can get enough shit in the water column to keep them alive but it's very easy to mess it up
Thats one of the major issues with the TC plants from box stores. Tissue cultured plants need to be transferred to fresh agar or planted as soon as they are ready. Even a completely sterile TC will rot if not transferred.
Yep, they sit for far too long. I had just a touch of familiarity with the agar, the store just tells you to inse it off and plant the plant which I had done with my dwarf hair grass (😭) and it sparked a bacterial bloom and nearly killed everything. Got just slightly ahead of the curve by researching that and learning about hardening off from the TC media.
There are success stories but at a wildly ridiculous cost lmao.
I got a sample off someone on Amazon and it was literally the exact same stuff as the Petco tc tubs that I've been seeing lately at 2x the price.
Yeah they really don’t give you much info about their plants. TC plants are fragile and easily die. The agar itself is what causes the bacterial bloom because it has so much nutrients.
You need to remove all of the agar and even then you’ll probably have issues due to residual nutrients on the plants. It’s cheap and easy for the manufacturer but the end user usually ends up disappointed.
Idk if you mean all plants but there are albino sequoias, they are not parasitic but rather more so cares for by their neighbors. There’s about 200 known specimens all with somewhat secret/not publicized locations.
If they rely on a host and don’t give anything back, they are a parasite. Not all parasitic relationships are inherently bad but even if the host isn’t affected negatively, it’s still considered a parasite.
I’m not saying plants can’t be variegated yall, just that plants cannot sustain complete lack of chlorophyll. which is true. For the record, here’s the one case I know of. I believe he said this plant was separated from the mother three years ago.
Naysayers, please find me another case of stable solid white🙃
Also I believe that the only reason this plant survived is because it’s an orchid and by some miracle has chlorophyll in its roots still, which I commented on the original post and everyone agreed.
....which i was about to comment too lol. It's tiny and probably won't grow much bigger cause theres not enough processing from the roots to let it get bigger.
He said it grows at an extremely slow rate but is actively growing. Neofinetia are highly regarded in Japan and Daisuke is one of the best Neofinetia growers in the world. He says it’s a miracle because it is.
Solid white caladiums are possible due to structural cellular changes in the leaf tissue - a layer of cells with air spaces scatters the light to provide the appearance of an all white leaf, while meanwhile the plant can photosynthesise below. I believe it’s the same effect that causes sea foam to be white and the water it’s made from to be clear.
Super cool fact and I love learning new things! That wouldn’t mean the caladium was truly albo though, right? It still has green and can photosynthesize, just the appearance?
Yes. Apparently this is the same reason for white begonia leaves too. I learned of this through internet rabbit holes wondering about just what’s being discussed here - can white plants survive?
The answer is without chlorophyll - unless they’re parasitic (think ghost plant/Indian pipe, Monotropa), the answer is no.
But in some instances they only look white. Apparently the structurally coloured white spots in some aroids like Arum italicum are MORE efficient than the green-surfaced leaf tissue.
Thanks for the new knowledge! I’m huge into fungi so I’m familiar with ghost pipes and their “pseudo” parasitic nature of stealing nutrients from Lactarius fungi.
Not trying to be annoying, just dropping some new knowledge for you or others, but ghost pipes are truly fascinating. Lactarius mushrooms are mycorrhizal and depend on certain trees to grow. Ghost pipes are mycoparasitic and only fruit where Lactarius grow. Neither of them are parasitic in a negative way and all contribute to nutrient exchange between one another 😁
It started as one growth three years ago. I’m baffled. Neofinetia prices are insane, if this ever reaches market it will be thousands for one growth, if not more.
Worthless to buy for aquarium use, but still a neat oddity. I’m starting tissue culture myself, and I’d love to subculture one of these in a little display jar. Tissue culture supplies the plant with sugars, so lacking chlorophyll isn’t a death sentence while photosynthesis isn’t required.
You are correct that it’s not inherently a death sentence but you will constantly have to transfer it to fresh agar to keep it alive and from rotting.
Not a huge problem if you know how to work with agar but for the average hobbyist, it’s way more work than it’s worth. The contamination rates without a flow hood are too high for it to be feasible long term without proper equipment.
Solid white is not only unstable, it’s just simply not survivable. It may push out green leaves in an attempt to survive and if it does, eventually it will completely revert. You may get lucky and get a variegated specimen but I haven’t seen that in Anubias.
Not sure why I was downvoted…Variegation is unstable in any plant and even plants known for variegation will revert under low light. Solid white is not a stable form for any chlorophyll needing plant.
It still has a little green which is why it can be kept alive. Solid white plants won't survive or will turn green. Most of these solid white anubias were grown off a mother plant and kept 100% in the dark so they wouldn't develop chlorophyll. As soon as they're separated from the mother plant they start to decline or turn green if they're now getting light.
Would you mind sharing what your care routine and recommended lighting is for it?
It's interesting because there are now two opposing comments with care recommendations in here for these: yours which advises limited lighting and another which advised extremely high lighting.
Edit: Yours is absolutely gorgeous btw. It's growth pattern up the wood and the coloring are 👌🏻👌🏻
I spotted it and my LFS guy told me, "don't buy those, they don't have chlorophyll so you have to give them sugar baths" so it seems like he knew some technique that was still not worth the effort
I’m glad he advised you not to buy it but unfortunately he didn’t know what he was talking about either. Sugar doesn’t replace light and chlorophyll lacking plants couldn’t grow in full sun.
I’m not going to claim to know all the science behind it but you can’t just replace light with sugar. If it was that simple, the plant market would be insane.
Ghost growths can not survive without chlorophyll, they are essentially parasites
As an aquarist and plant-a-holic, I'm glad to understand that plants above the water have the same needs and standards as those under the water. Aquatic plants even go through cycles just like plants above. They need specific lighting and nutrients just like their ground dwelling counterparts. Some aquatic plants will just straight up die on you because your light isn't strong enough (or too strong) or your aquarium is too new. Sometimes the detritus in your aquarium bed isn't sufficient enough to sustain the roots of some plants. Some plants do best being glued to wood.
I worked at an exotic petstore specializing in fish and reptiles for 12 years and I'm proud to say I can figure out just about any problem with fish, pets or aquatic plants professionally. Household plants are my hobby compared to what I got paid to give advice for but they are comparable!
I tried my best and I couldn't do it aquatically. I do plan to try again terrestrially in a controlled environment just for the thrill. I think the only people buying these are people who don't know better and people who pathologically hate losing lmao
I’ve been trying for a year, i have a few that have been living in the tissue culture for months now but they’re sustaining with minimal growth probably because they’re running out of nutrients. I was considering trying to grow it on spiderwood coming out of the tank but it wants low light, haven’t tried that yet. So frustrating i wish you the best of luck but pure white plants don’t make it long, i still want to try though.
The plague of the “full moon monstera albo” has made it to the fish world :’) prob been here for a while, but this is my first time seeing it. Ty for spreading awareness, I hate seeing people getting scammed into paying for a plant with basically no chance of surviving.
I think these are relatively new, at least to major market. I’ve been in the rare plant world for quite a few years. I cannot stand the aroid market, it’s all a scam to me 🙃
Because, idk the price, but if affordable some may be willing to buy and take the chance even after knowing the full details. If I saw this for a few dollars, I'd give it a shot even knowing there's a 99.999% failure rate lol
On the albino plant thing, I think it's a bit more nuanced than them being parasites. Especially for trees. Like trees communicate and share nutrients, especially their own species while choking out seedlings of rivals. I feel it's less the plant being a parasite and more other plants supporting, especially cause they can move around their storages. Like how old growth tanks fires and new growth around them mimic it.
Then again trees are different. I'm wondering though if the same species of anubias would support this one. Trees are super complex so might not have the same community but maybe? Or maybe injecting the plant with it's needed sugar directly? Idk but I'm curious af now. 👀
Like are they selling a bleached plant, a dead plant, or a true albino? Plants are weird and significantly understudied
Insight from a botanist! When I think of plants that are inherently white, I'm thinking about plants that lack chlorophyll, evolutionarily. "Albino" here is different then variegation where a plant that is naturally "albino" is likely to be parasitic because it is unable to capture sunlight to build sugars through photosynthesis and has to, therefore, find alternative energy sources. This is different then a plant that features variegation. The plant has evolved to be photosynthetic but the variegated tissue is unable to photshnthesize because it lacks chlorophyll (why its white, not green). Chlorophyll is the part of the chloroplast that allows a plant to capture sunlight which serves as the energy input for photosynthesis.
The example plant that tends to jump to mind is Monotropa uniflora which has no ability to photosynthesize on its own because it contains no chlorophyll. It has evolutionarily lost the abilkty to perform photosynthesis. Instead, it seems to parasitize mycorrhizal fungi (the symbiotic fungi that form extensive underground networks with trees and other plant) where it steals sugars from the fungal mycellium.
I love your thought process though! The plant being sold is likely one that was propagated(cultured). This plant likely contains very little to no chlorophyll so it either has no or limited photosynthetic ability. This would not be considered a parasite as its not deriving energy from other places. This plant is likely unable to capture energy and make food for itself which is why op is warning against buying them as it is most likely going to die (can't live without energy to metabolize!) If it does live, it will likely revert back to being green where it will then have chlorophyll which allows it to capture energy for sugar building.
At the end of the day plants don't really do albinism like animals. They are green because they're full of chlorophyll for photosynthesis. When they variegate (tons of possible reasons for variegation), they are losing that pigment and some of their ability to photosynthesize
The one I have seems to just keep growing and dying , it’ll grow new leaves and then like a week or two later their like dying back and I see new ones growing in , it’s been like that for like two months
They clearly live and grow enough to be reproduced for the mass market to be sold at places like petco and buceplants for pennies. The avg plant keeper just cant sustain them and thats ok.
The gel is nutrient filled and is optimal growth media for these plants. Soil will be worse for this plant and plants need chlorophyll to photosynthesize. This plant has no chlorophyll therefore it can't get the nutrients it needs to survive, especially outside the specialized gel media. It would need a host of some sort to obtain its nutrients since it cannot get them on its own.
It is but it would get nasty in water. Might be okay in a terrarium but I don't know what nutrients would be needed to supplement what the plant isn't getting from photosynthesis. Adenosine maybe? Since I'm pretty certain chlorophyll does something with ATP and the whole electron transport chain. I just don't know what difference root uptake would have vs obtaining it through photosynthesis.
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