The Thai Constellation on my shelf threw a pure green leaf last March. Not pale, not lightly speckled — green, glossy, vigorous, the kind of leaf a plant pushes out when it's finally happy. I should have been pleased. Instead I watched it unfurl with the dread of someone reading a bank statement, because that leaf was telling me the meristem had drifted, and the silver-flecked plant I'd paid for two years earlier was quietly turning into something cheaper.
This is the part of variegation nobody puts on the tag. The white on most collector plants isn't a trait the plant inherited — it's an argument happening inside the growing tip, cell by cell, and the argument can end at any moment. Understanding which kind of variegation you actually own is the difference between a plant you can propagate and a plant you're just renting from its own meristem.