FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Has anyone or does anyone propagate sarracenia rhizome or off shoots in tissue culture? I am not I interested in seed, I would like advise or if here is a link to some further info that would be great.

It has been done, but there isn't much info out there. As far as I know all, or nearly all, success has come from commercial labs who aren't too keen to share their methods.

Yes info is rather scarce but if there is a will there is a way.

It would be good to know as there are so many hard to get saracenia someone needs to get them in to tissue culture to make them more available

bugman wrote:It would be good to know as there are so many hard to get saracenia someone needs to get them in to tissue culture to make them more available

Agreed.

I've done some research, both hands on and investigative, and from what I can gather, flower stalks are the way to go. But I've not yet had one form callus and I've tried all sorts of media mixes and hormone combinations.

Have you tried a rhizome pulling similar to the dionaea, pulling of the base if the tube attached to the rhizome?

Or do you attempted to remove a very young off shoot and introduce that?

bugman wrote:Have you tried a rhizome pulling similar to the dionaea, pulling of the base if the tube attached to the rhizome?

I don't use the rhizome on Dionaea because it's too hard to get clean and doesn't form callus very easily. I suspect that the rhizome of a Sarracenia would be extremely hard to get clean as well, so I haven't tried it.

bugman wrote:Or do you attempted to remove a very young off shoot and introduce that?

Nope, I've not tried that, but if I were to make another attempt at starting Sarracenia in TC, I'd probably try newly forming leaves.

Whe you say new leaves are you talking pitcher or phyllodia?

bugman wrote:Whe you say new leaves are you talking pitcher or phyllodia?

Both. I don't know what tissue is going to form callus the most easily. In flytraps, the leaves form callus long before flower stalks do. But they're much harder to get clean. I suspect that one of either phyllodia or pitchers will likely form callus more quickly, but I don't have a guess as to which one, nor which hormones to use to induce callus.

Well I hope others will add to this thread as it is about time we learnt how to do this

I'm thinking of having a sarracenia that may be worthy of cultivar status tissue cultured next year. If the commercial labs have techniques they're not telling us about, can anyone recommend a European lab for doing it?

Well you cz plants and a few others and the dutch growers but if they are tc'ing sarracenia it must be seed as the hot varieties are not being sold anywhere unless they are building stock, but I think they just stick with mass produceding nameless varieties.

I think it will have to be down to private growers to work this out

TC from some sort of non-seed tissue has been worked out, that is how we have cultivars like 'Judith Hindle', 'Tarnok', 'Daina's Delight', and the UNC Little Bugs series so readily available. The issue is that they were done by commercial labs who don't share their methods.

It's better to use Sar. seed for TC beginner. It's hard to sterilize explant not mulitply. Sar quickly multiplies without hormone. After a year you may have hundred or more if you want to multiply.


From one seed, it can produce 5 jars like this


Deflask and growing


Deflask from one jar. There is not enough space to deflask 5 jars.

cvlover wrote:It's better to use Sar. seed for TC beginner. It's hard to sterilize explant not mulitply. Sar quickly multiplies without hormone. After a year you may have hundred or more if you want to multiply.


From one seed, it can produce 5 jars like this


Deflask and growing


Deflask from one jar. There is not enough space to deflask 5 jars.

I'm not entirely sure I understand the concept of tissue culture, and how it can produce all those plants from just one seed. Educate me?

Those are actually Darlingtonia in the photos

GothicJackalPaws wrote:I'm not entirely sure I understand the concept of tissue culture, and how it can produce all those plants from just one seed. Educate me?

It's exactly the same way that plants divide naturally when you grow them in dirt except you give them nutrients and hormones to make it happen more often.