Spray painted hedera (and ID if possible)

11 years ago

Today I was in the .99 store and they had just gotten in a shipment of plants. I noticed a little hedera that looked interesting. It looked like it had yellow variegation, but when I felt the leaves they were actually PAINTED!
When I looked in the boxes there were all kinds painted in different colors.
I found this one that seems to have two different plants in it, one of them had really unique leaves (to me, anyway :))
I don't know what kind of paint it is, it smells slightly like regular spray paint. I've tried washing it off with soap and water and rubbing alcohol. Neither worked.
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone knows what variety it may be (I couldn't find it in a image search).
I hope it produces some new leaves before it dies from being painted (why would anyone paint a plant with paint that doesn't rinse off? Morons)! I really like it, the leaves remind me of butterflies, hope it lives.
Thank you

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Comments (4)

birdsnblooms
11 years ago
Hi W. I can't ID your Ivy, but it's very pretty and interesting. Never saw an Ivy that resembles yours.

I too have seen quite a few painted plants the last few years. It's a marketing gimmick.

A concept painted plants will sell. Make money.

A shopper sees a plant display with blue/red/pink sparkly leaves, thinks, 'Wow! Such unusual plants!' (Consumers who have one or two plants, or new to plants.)
Bingo, a sale!

Just my opinion, but leaves need to breath. Any substance on leaves, 'sparkles/paint/leaf shine' is unhealthy.

Marketers are apathetic/greedy..they figure, they'll make $..when a plant dies, more often than not, consumer/s buy another. Toni
Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL
11 years ago
I can't tell if all of the leaves are painted or just some? Is there any paint on the stems? Are the bottom of the leaves painted? Is that white or silver? If you feel like showing a pic of the whole thing, I'd look at it, but can't guarantee I won't have more pop quiz questions.

Kind of looks like that on this page, labeled H. hibernica. This seems to be confirmed here, from what I can see in your pics. What do you think?

Wouldn't it be funny if they painted them green? Why does this thought amuse me so much? This was discussed recently about poinsettias.
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wiccadgardener
Original Author
11 years ago
Thank you for the response.
The first one I looked at had just a light sprinkling of paint (like spray paint over-spray), but this one has a really heavy coating on most of the leaves.
I got it anyway, just because I've never seen one with leaves like this (it was the only one there)
The underside isn't painted so hopefully that will allow it to live long enough to produce new leaves, poor thing.
I've never seen plants painted like this before. I've seen some with glitter glued on at christmas, but that seemed to wash off pretty easily.
Greedy idiots!!
wiccadgardener
Original Author
11 years ago
Purpleinopp, Thank you for responding. No the underside isn't painted, some of the stems have paint on them (it looks like it was sprayed from above, in the second picture you can kind of see an area where the leaf was covered by another part of the leaf and didn't get painted).
It's actually light yellow paint, and they DID have some painted a florescent green!
The leaves kind of look like H. hibernica, except part of the leaf stands up (on both sides) like butterfly wings.