Just a couple photos

[Steve D]

Two photos I took today of a VFT Big Mouth and Royal Red in my little greenhouse.

I prefer to plant my young Venus Flytraps in styrofoam (polystyrene, I guess) insulating beverage cups, the 16 ounce and 20 ounce ones. I really believe in giving Venus Flytraps plenty of vertical space to sink their roots into. I frequently have VFTs with roots over 8 inches long. If I can't find a tall but narrow planting container, and one of sufficient depth looks too wide for a single VFT, then I often plant several together in one planter.






Best wishes all--

Steve

[quogue]

Hiya Steve. That's a really good idea of planting in Styrofoam cups to regulate temp and for the depth Flytraps like!
Great pics too!
I'd like to add a couple pics I've posted on the other forums as well...

Big Pot:


Little Pot:


There's various Clones all together in those two...

[Steve D]

quogue said:

I'd like to add a couple pics I've posted on the other forums as well...
There's various Clones all together in those two...

Nice, nice, NICE!

Can you list a few of the cultivars that are growing in those containers. I love to see happy and healthy Venus Flytraps and yours look very content and robust under your care with your growing technique. ;D

I'll have more photos to share too as the season progresses. My Flytraps are really growing great this year, and I like to play with my camera (an Olympus E-300 digital SLR, my first single-lens reflex camera ever).

-Steve

[Steve D]

OK, I couldn't resist. I got my camera out and took another photo of several of my Venus Flytraps in polyurethane foam pots, with a U.S. $5 bill in the picture to try to give some idea of scale. That's "Royal Red" in the pot at lower left, "Vigorous" in the red pot at lower right, "Low Giant" in the middle and "Red Piranha" to its right.

[pinglover]

Very nice indeedy!

[quogue]

Thanks for the compliment Steve! Your plants are looking great themselves!!
Believe it or not, these guys are grown year round indoors under artificial lights. I guess the myth that they hafta be grown outdoors to grow well is busted..
Replicating the 4 seasons is necessary I've learned.

Not sure what all the cultivars are even. I know there's a Dentate and there's definitely Typicals, but I got a clump from Black Jungle a couple years ago and the plants have always exhibited non-typical characteristics such as an Orange Traps and long teeth.. some have Redder Traps.
I also picked out two unique plants from the NYBG Gift Shop a couple years back, not Scientific, but they do seem to be holding the charateristics I got them for. Time will tell for those.

As far as I know, the definition of a cultivar is if the plant exhibits and holds the characteristics.
I realize that in the Spring, plants can exhibit Big Mouth characteristics that change when Summer growth comes, but if those traits stay throughout the season when other plants grow Summer traps and the plant does that year after year, then it looks like it's a Big Mouth.
Maybe similar mutations pop up in seperate batches of TC and you get a plant that grows a Cultivars characteristics from yer local Dime-Store. Possible?
It's also possible for a Nursery to have a plant that grows big and sells it as a "Giant" or something similar and it's just that they have favorable conditions and it doesn't exhibit those characteristics elsewhere.
Some growers might sell TC mutants as a new cultivar when the traits only last a year or two out of TC.
Those are possiblities too.
Ahhh... it's a slow day at work an I'm Goofin' off.... haha

[Steve D]

My understanding of cultivars (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong) is this--

A cultivar is a specific plant: one specific plant that grew from seed (or one specific plant that was the result of mutation during tissue culture or something). Its unique genetic makeup causes it to have characteristics that someone thinks are nice, so that someone gives a "pet name" to that particular plant. That single plant is then considered a "cultivar" (if registered and accepted by the community) and is then known by its "pet name." Dionaea "Big Mouth" is a cultivare that was at one time a single plant--just one single Venus Flytrap, the only one of its exact kind on Earth.

So how do other people get that same plant? Through asexual propagation, either by tissue culture, rooted leaf cutting, or the natural vegetative propagation that some plants do in addition to flowering and producing seed. A single Darlingtonia californica plant can produce runners underground that produce their own roots and leaves, so the runner-produced plant is genetically identical to the plant it springs from (unlike plants grown from seed, which are necessarily genetically diverse), and if that plant was named (in other words, if it is a "cultivar") then the runner-produced plantlet is also a member of that same cultivar.

Venus Flytraps readily produce offshoot plantlets when well fed and healthy. So do (at least some) Sarracenia, right? Any plant produced from a cultivar in an asexual way (directly from the growing plant tissue itself, naturally or with human help, and not from the seed of the plant) is (theoretically anyway) genetically identical and is considered to be the exact same plant--the same "cultivar" as the single one-and-only original plant that was named and therefore then became a cultivar.

Is that right, everybody?

[Michael Catalani]

xscd said:

Any plant produced from a cultivar in an asexual way (directly from the growing plant tissue itself, naturally or with human help, and not from the seed of the plant) is (theoretically anyway) genetically identical and is considered to be the exact same plant--the same "cultivar" as the single one-and-only original plant that was named and therefore then became a cultivar.

Is that right, everybody?

Whereas a plant that was asexually created from another plant should be genetically identical, they dont have to be in order to be considered part of the same cultivar.

In the case of Sarracenia, lets say we have a cultivar called S. cv 'blockhead' which was created from a hybrid of S. oreophila x S. leucophylla. A totally different plant made from a cross of S. flava x S leucohylla could be considered S. cv 'blockhead' if it contains the same descriptive traits as the cultivar description.

And remember, no shooting the messenger on this one

[BarryRice]

Hey Folks,

Michael Catalani is right on spot here. I've spent quite a bit of time studying the cultivar code. This code is written to cover all plants, so a lot of it doesn't apply to CP, but it is still somewhat interesting to read.

Anyway, cultivars designate a plant's attributes, and not its heritage. So, for example, the entire cultivar description of Dionaea 'Justina Davis' pretty much boils down to it being an anthocyanin-free Dionaea. It doesn't matter whether this is a mutation you develop in your breeding program, or you find in the wild...any anthocyanin-free VFT is Dionaea 'Justina Davis'. Now, if you develop a sawtooth or extra-giant anthocyanin-free Dionaea, those would be observably different from the description of 'Justina Davis', and so could be given new cultivar names.

IF the plant breeds true from seed, you can propagate the cultivar that way too.

By the way, some of the plants discussed on this thread are truly cultivars, others are cultivar wannabes that haven't been registered yet. I think I've got a complete list of registered VFT cultivars at: www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq2680.html

More geeky info on cultivars is at www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq3920.html and the pages that follow, but that's a bit off track of this thread.

Great plants in the photos, by the way!

Barry

Here's a picture of little 'Justina Davis', by the way:

[quogue]

The more geeky info the better!!
There's a lotta variety in Flytraps, it'd be good to see them all settled down into their spots. Such as:
Is there a difference between the 'Dingley's Giant' and the 'Czech Giant'? If there is, it'd be great to see them each registered and described as well as all the other great variety's to be found...

[ICPS-bob]

There is a general subject on Cultivars at
icps.proboards105.com/index.cgi?board=naming

The large number of names given to VFTs is really confusing. In addition, what a given plant looks like under one set of growing conditions often looks very different under other growing conditions.

The cultivar naming rules of if it looks like the description, then you can call your unknown plant the cultivar name also leads to a mess. A good example is 'Akai Ryu'. The cultivar was selected from a group of seven clones for its outstanding characteristics.
www.carnivorousplants.org/cpn/Species/v25n2p50.html
However, many of the 'Akai Ryu' now in cultivation today are not that original clone, because growers have named other red VFTs and red seedlings 'Akai Ryu'. Growers complain that their 'Akai Ryu' is not so special -- and for good reason.

[Deleted]

wow those are some really awesome pictures of VFTs

[quogue]

Some more pics of Flytraps....

All in one pot:










Tiki Flytraps:








These are pics of a cross between the Burbank's Best and Triffid Park plants. I got this from Peter at CaliCarn a few years ago.
He even said "I dunno if this'll be anything" cause I guess crossing two Flytrap Cultivars would probly make a Typical.
But it's been producing big, low traps on short leaves with really red mouths for a couple years now....

Regardless of what it is, I love the little guy!!