Anyone breeding for tolerance of hard water?

[brokken]

I keep seeing posts about the various wonderful hybrids while at the same time, I also read complaints about how problematic it can be to obtain RO.

I know that CP's evolved in a nutrient-poor environment and that exposure to fertilizers will burn their roots, however many plants were selectively bred to do better in more hostile environments and that begs the question: Has anyone ever tried to breed for a sarracenia that can withstand the richer soils and hard water that other plants can?

Like taking a field of sarracenias and exposing them to ever higher concentrations of fertilizers and then selectively breed those that survive and adapt the best.

I know I'm probably going to get some dirty looks from members who enjoy the care and process required to take care of these plants. Part of their mystique being that you can't find them at your local Walmart greenhouse - and even if you can, most people wouldn't know anything but how to kill them.

Still.... The prospect of growing a bed of Sarracenia without any concerns about what kind of water you use sure sounds appealing.

[Aidan]

brokken said:

Still.... The prospect of growing a bed of Sarracenia without any concerns about what kind of water you use sure sounds appealing.

Appealing perhaps, but not really practicable. Carnivorous plants evolved carnivory thanks to the nutrient poor, (usually) acidic environments that they inhabit. Remove that environment and there is no requirement for carnivory. What you end up with is a daffodil and we don't grow daffodils...

[brokken]

I understand that carnivory was developed as a result of poor soils, but consider this: We no longer need our appendices and yet they continue to hang on vestigially. One could develop a tolerance in sarracenia and still retain those traits that they developed when it was a survival mechanism: Form w/o function.

Of course, this need not be an effort to transform our beloved CPs into daffodils as you put it - simply an effort to make them more resistant to a condition that seems to plague a number of people - that of hard water that enrich the soil too quickly.

[rsivertsen]

The origin of carnivory in some plants is even more primal than the survival in poor soils; the evolution of most pitcher plants was simply a means for the storage of water in order to survive the dry spells. Many areas only have two seasons, a wet season, followed by an arid dry spell. Perhaps Cephalotus also evolved with similar means.

It’s interesting that both Sarraceneacaea and Nepenthecaea, evolved from completely different lines of evolution, in order to develop these features that retained water which enabled them to survive the desiccating and punishing dry season. To this day, S. purpurea and Heliamphora species can often be found nearly submerged in water after the wet season.

Those plants that also took advantage of the insects that became caught in these storage reserves, by absorbing and assimilating those nutrients for their own benefit, obtained the secondary benefit, which enabled them to compete in those areas that lacked available nitrogenous matter.

Our appendices is just a part of a lot of DNA coding, that may have had previous uses, but doesn’t get deleted, but it did evolve in ruminates to form the “second stomach” which, along with the symbiosis of some prokaryotic life, enables them to digest plant cellulose.

Many CPs do tolerate hard water conditions, including Aldrovanda, Pinguicula, and Cephalotus, and some Drosera, but to try to breed the more sensitive plants could take a very long time!

[Aidan]

brokken - Try planting Sarracenia in a relatively nutrient rich medium and watch what happens. If the plant is not killed outright, growth may be reduced to massively deformed phyllodiform leaves incapable of catching anything excepting perhaps a disease! I've tried it with S. purpurea growing in a hard water garden pond for a year. Three years after removing the plant to a more normal environment it still had not recovered and ended up on the compost heap.

[brokken]

aidan said:

brokken - Try planting Sarracenia in a relatively nutrient rich medium and watch what happens. If the plant is not killed outright, growth may be reduced to massively deformed phyllodiform leaves incapable of catching anything excepting perhaps a disease! I've tried it with S. purpurea growing in a hard water garden pond for a year. Three years after removing the plant to a more normal environment it still had not recovered and ended up on the compost heap.

Well, it wouldn't be a matter of aclimatizing existing strains of sarracenia, but rather determining which individuals are most adept at surviving the hostile conditions and breeding from those. Like having a greenhouse full of them and start gradually watering them with progressively harder water. Those less fit to survive would die off first leaving the progressively stronger individuals to flourish. Yeah, it seems like a waste of perfectly good carnivorous plants, but hey SOMEONE might be doing it.

[meizwang]

start by breeding with S. rosea-it seems to be more tolerant of solutes than most other species.

[pitcherfreak]

Probably would work best. Especially as the literature suggests that S. purp is tolerant to calcarious soils in some places. Would probably be easiest to test with hard water (ie calcium) and not other nutrients if it's the problem you are trying to fix. It may take some time for reactions in plants to become aparent. If there was a way to source S. purp or other species seed from hard water areas you might also be able to short cut a few generations.