How do you create a hybrid Nepenthes on your own?

[sarracenialover]

Do you just place pollen from one flowering stem from one species to another species and wait for the result? Or does it require more careful observations? I want to try out some this for myself. Any information would greatly appreciated!!!

[Michael Catalani]

sarracenialover said:

Do you just place pollen from one flowering stem from one species to another species and wait for the result? Or does it require more careful observations? I want to try out some this for myself. Any information would greatly appreciated!!!

It's as simple as taking the pollen from a male and applying it to a receptive female flower. Bada-boom, bada-bing...and done.

Each female flower on the inflorescence could be fertilized with a different male plant altogether. This makes it plausable to get hundreds of different crosses from a single female plant, each cross creating hundreds of seeds.

However, the one problem is that some female species can be VERY receptive, and can produce a sticky, epoxy like substance which seems to be able to capture pollen from wind currents very efficiently.

As an example, I once had a female that was flowering in a chamber , located in a 2nd floor room of my house. It was the only plant in flower inside the house. Although I did not purposely fertilize it, the plant still got crossed with another male that was in flower out in the greenhouse. This was likely due to pollen being captured in my clothing when I was in the greenhouse and then released as I opened up a chamber inside the house. But this gives you some idea how receptive the females can be, and how difficult it can be to accurately determine your crosses if you have more than one male species in flower with the female. So while it may be possible to have hundreds of different crosses per Nepenthes female plant, it can also be very difficult to accurately know what the final cross will ultimately be if you have multiple males in flower at the same time.

For this reason, you should keep a very good record log of all males that are in flower while a female is receptive. If you make a cross and it doesnt grow out into a plant that it should appear to be, you can refer back to your records and determine what cross it probably is.

If you want to cross your female with multiple males, then using different colored thread for each cross and loosely tying them to each flower will help keep track of the crosses over time as the seed ripens.

For example, say you had a female N. maxima in flower. You have pollen from N. truncata, N. veitchii, and N. talangensis. You would need three different colors of thread, and assign each color to one of the males. Any female flower you apply N. truncata pollen to will get a red thread tied to it. All flowers that get pollinated with N. veitchii will get a green thread. And all flowers crossed with N. talangensis will get a white thread. After the pods mature, seed from any flower that has a red thread should be N. maxima x N. truncata, green threads should be N. maxima x N. veitchii, and white threads should be N. maxima x N. talangensis.

Then keep these records intact for the next 5 or more years, because as the seedlings grow out, you will be comparing their mature traits to what you would expect to see in the cross. If the seedlings grow out into a plant that has different traits than would be expected in the cross, then you could refer back to your records and may be able to easily surmise from the other males which cross it is.

[sarracenialover]

thanks Mike!!