FlyTrapCare Forums

This intermedia showed up as a volunteer plant and significantly outsizes any other intermedia that I have. For reference, that is a 5 inch pot. Any thoughts about what could produce such long petioles? The leaves are pretty much the same size as all of the other plants. I don't know if it crossed itself with something out there or it just hit bingo in its genetics, but I'm definitely going to keep an eye on it and propagate it.

A couple years ago, I bought some seeds from Carlton Carnivores that were labeled "Carolina Giant". Here is his description:

A highly variable and widespread species, this variant as the name suggests comes from the Carolinas, rosetted rather than stem-forming in nature and capable of growing to more than 4″ in diameter (though 2-3″ is common especially in colonies). Leaves spread out in pincushion fashion, with narrow, lengthy petioles and small, teardrop-shaped lamina, all colored in bright green with red tentacles (flushing red in the strongest light).

You might have one of them.

I didn't think it was crazy big, but I looked at mine I got from Bizarre Botanicals. There's a couple of mature ones in there. The top one is much more erect growing with shorter petioles, while the bottom one is more leggy with longer petioles. The bottom one almost spans the entire four inch pot.
Then I compared them to my seed grown typicals Lots of variation in petiole length. Sown this spring, plant size ranges from ~1 inch to ~3 inches, with obvious differences in petiole lengths.
Then my tropical intermedia Pretty uniform in size, ~1 inch, but some slight differences in petiole lengths.
It's most likely just differences in genetic expression, much like different VFT characteristics.
However, mad scientist time, maybe one could selectively breed long petiole to long petiole over and over to eventually get a 12 inch wide intermedia. See how far the genetic expression can be stretched.