FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Is it possible to get seeds sutch as B52, Big Mouth or Pink Venus and the seeds grow plants with the same featchures as the parent

for what i have heard, no you can't get a cultivar through seeds but i have also heard that teh B52 is good at giving its characteristics to its seeds

No, you can't call plants raised from seed the same clone as the parent plant. The way genetics work, the plant will be different. Nearly all Dionaea cultivars should only be propagated vegetatively (cloned). The one exception I can think of is 'Red Burgundy'. Supposedly if you self pollinate 'Red Burgundy' it will retain its characteristics.

So can you not cultivate flytraps by selective breeding, allways hand polinateing the plants with desired charictheristics (wow word too big to spell) and then over a long lenghy period of time and meany genarations of seed grown plants ( allways choosing the best most disired plant and breeding them ) wouldent you eventuly come up with a type of flytrape breed, more or less what they did in the breeding of animals

Dr GreenThumb wrote:So can you not cultivate flytraps by selective breeding

Yes, you can selectively breed Dionaea and many people do it to get plants that are more desirable, just as you say people did it with the breeding of animals and other plants. However, once a particular clone is registered as a cultivar, you can't reproduce that clone through sexual means (seeds). Only through asexual propagation (tissue culture, leaf pullings, divisions, etc.) are the cultivar characteristics 100% preserved.