FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi all,

Does anyone have personal experience with some of the freaky VFT cultivars reverting? I know there have been some discussions of this in the past (2013 ish), but a lot of these cultivars were pretty new at that time. I am hoping some folks have more data to work with as the years have passed. I have been interested in getting into some of these cultivars in the future. I know various stores mention the possibility of inconsistencies on some of these, but I am hoping to gather more comprehensive information on what to expect. I have heard about reverting and/or inconsistent behavior from cultivars such as Biohazard, Cheerleader, and Mirror.

I think my biggest questions revolve around a curiosity of their expected behavior: are the reversions of any of these cultivars more or less permanent? Any reversions cyclical? Has anyone been able to correlate time of year/season/environment to the changes? Do the "reversions" tend to be the whole plant or just inconsistencies between individual traps? Any other cultivars that do this?

I have also noticed that a few of these have newer/improved versions and/or related cultivars, such as Biohazard 2, Mirror x Mirror, and Cerberus. It's really cool to see the progress being made on these varieties!

Cheers,
Bixtor36

I have a young "mirror" very small and im also interested in when it will revert to a typical but one thing i have noticed is it grows unbelievably slowly i mean super slow. You mentioned mirror x mirror which according to matt is an improvement but he has stopped propagating "mirror" and "mirror x mirror" as they are both unstable. Its not worth him growing them if they are going to revert and not be reliable. I had mine for free and as awesome as they are i don't think i would pay for one until it can be stabilised. To answer one of your questions it appears the mutation of traps is randomly intermittent. Mine has a few cup like traps and some typical looking traps, it's yet to produce a full mirrored trap although one or two do have some growth nodules on the back of the traps. The rate it is growing I think it will be sometime till it shows it's party piece.

From the houseplant world: when a plant looks to revert, we cut off the "normal" (usually green, if the mutation is for variegation) growth and force the plant to grow in again. Once you have normal growth, it usually does much better than the variant and can quickly overtake the plant.

Adriana that's interesting I didn't know some variegated plants revert to the original leaf type. I assumed "mirror" and similiar cultivars revert for survival purposes but I know its far more complex than that. It baffles me that if a plants genetics determine the strange growth how on earth does it correct itself. Perhaps my assumption is totally wrong and genetics have little to do with it and it's possibly hormonal factors that cause the mutated growth. Its very interesting and something I think I'm going to have to research for myself.

Yeah, this is really interesting. I wasn't aware of this either!

I know certain genes can be switched on/off but I don't know what causes it. Its like the plant knows it's deformed and switches up to correct itself. Its pretty amazing when you think about it. Imagine animals/humans could do this.

Amazing indeed! In the words of Rick Sanchez, "Sometimes science is more art than science"

Bixtor36 wrote:Does anyone have personal experience with some of the freaky VFT cultivars reverting?

Yes, there are several that revert to normal traps. The following cultivars aren't stable for us:
Biohazard
Pom Pom (aka Cheerleader)
Mirror

There are more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Matt wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 12:17 am

Bixtor36 wrote:Does anyone have personal experience with some of the freaky VFT cultivars reverting?

Yes, there are several that revert to normal traps. The following cultivars aren't stable for us:
Biohazard
Pom Pom (aka Cheerleader)
Mirror

There are more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Thanks for the insight, Matt! Do the deformed trap cultivars like Cupped, Trichterfalle, Wacky Traps, etc have any similar reversions? From what I have seen with those, they tend to be pretty stable.

Cheers,
Bixtor36

Bixtor36 wrote:Do the deformed trap cultivars like Cupped, Trichterfalle, Wacky Traps, etc have any similar reversions?

Cupped Trap and Wacky Traps are very stable. Trichterfalle only produces its odd-looking traps here and there, but it does it with some regularity, thus it doesn't really revert to a typical.

Matt wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 1:23 am

Bixtor36 wrote:Do the deformed trap cultivars like Cupped, Trichterfalle, Wacky Traps, etc have any similar reversions?

Cupped Trap and Wacky Traps are very stable. Trichterfalle only produces its odd-looking traps here and there, but it does it with some regularity, thus it doesn't really revert to a typical.

Very cool. I'm excited to someday get to enjoy these cultivars firsthand

Sucks to hear about cheerleader. That one was so ridiculously wild I wanted to find one. So if you were to propagate it after it reverted, would the new clone express the mutation?

Apollyon wrote:So if you were to propagate it (Pom Pom, aka Cheerleader) after it reverted, would the new clone express the mutation?

Yes. It seems to come and go with unpredictable regularity. However, the larger the plant gets, the less frequently it produces Pom Pom traps. I've not been able to figure out any sort of pattern to it...