FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi,

I am so confused in regards to VFT Cultivars.

Example: Plant A say has Large deep purplish traps, So the person decides to clone this plant by division/Invitro therefore preserving the characteristics that the mother plant had which now results in Plant B (the child plant) from A (mother plant). This is my current understanding of this. Is this correct?

I would like to know some of the natural wild traits of Venus' Fly Traps. I have heard people say that any clone characteristic can be from the wild however; If this is the case then why aren't there recorded "WackyTraps" or "Biohazard" plants found in wild populations? Is this because these plants have been TC induced by chemicals in the TC medium? Or this mutation is also found in wild plants? and it's just not as apparent due to the fact that it dies right away in the wild?

Rick Keen also created his own cultivar by I believe by cross pollination?. I forget which type of Flytrap it was but it was officially registered as a new Cultivar some years back which means this cultivar could not be found in wild populations because of the cross in polination?

Basically what I am interested in is Natural Wild Traits of these plants. To my understanding basically any Cultivar that has unadulterated genes caused by man or tc induced by chemicals are in the wild? If this is the case then which plant cultivars have no unadulterated genes by man or are not chemically induced? B52? Guerrilla? etc? This really interests me and want to get things clear.

Most cultivars are mutations that developed when growing VFT from seed. Each plant of a cultivar is a clone of the original plant. You can't get a wild population of "Wacky Traps" because it will only grow there if someone plants it. A seed from a "Wacky Traps" plant will not be a "Wacky Traps" plant

Yes, the only way to get more of a cultivar is by divisions or TC. You cannot grow cultivars from seed since the resulting sprout has a shuffle of genetic material. It may be similar to the parent, but seedgrowns will never be 100% clones of a cultivar (except some cases like how D. capensis albino seems to always make more albino seeds).

Wild venus flytraps pretty much look how one may expect them to look. Some cultivars can originate from seed mutated in TC, but there's also a chance of some weirdo popping up naturally from seed. Like you said they probably will die in the wild since there is no one to 'baby' them and they will be gotten rid of thorough natural selection, or at least no one will propagate them which results in no noticeable amounts of that type in the wild.

Most of the cultivars are just selected seed grown plants which naturally got a genetic shuffle through pollination, the TC mutation cultivar is a rare event for creating cultivars. Crossing the now existing cultivars is common, but the resulting seedling will not always have what you expect due to the genetic randomness (i.e. crossing "alien" and "akai rye" won't give you a whole tray of red colored and alien shaped VFTs). But it does seem to increase the chances of something special popping up (i.e. crossing red cultivars will give you a higher % of red colored seedlings vs. growing a typical VFT's seeds and hoping for a red colored plant to pop up). I wouldn't say that every cultivar is in the wild (because there will never be an exact gene shuffle like the one that occurred to make a particular cultivar) but let's say something very similar to a particular cultivar's traits (how angelwings, buttcheeks, and moon traps are all different and not clones of each other)...I would say yes, anything theoretically has the potential to pop up in the wild with constant genetic shuffle in sprouting seeds, but when that will occur (or if it has already at one point) and if it survives to propagate itself is another issue.

Jonathan_ wrote:Hi,
Example: Plant A say has Large deep purplish traps, So the person decides to clone this plant by division/Invitro therefore preserving the characteristics that the mother plant had which now results in Plant B (the child plant) from A (mother plant). This is my current understanding of this. Is this correct?

Depending on how you're thinking about it. I would say "...which now results in another Plant A" since it is a clone.

Yeah, wacky traps would probably not do well in the wild because its not a very strong grower and not capable of trapping food very well. This is the case for some of the other stranger cultivars too. Some also are sterile and can't produce viable seeds so it would be a tall task for them (or their unique traits) to survive long-term and to actually be found in the wild. I have seen photos of wild traps with dentate-type and fuzed teeth. So some of the same type of crazy mutations do naturally occur out there.

To my understanding basically any Cultivar that has unadulterated genes caused by man or tc induced by chemicals are in the wild?

No. A few may have been taken from the wild a long time ago (I feel like I used to know of one, I was thinking 'justina davis', but couldn't find anything to back that up) - others more recently and illegally (a felony.) So those cultivars may also exist in the wild, but most cultivars occur in cultivation. There probably are non-identical doppelgangers for many of them in the wild.

If this is the case then which plant cultivars have no unadulterated genes by man or are not chemically induced

no unadulterated genes - so are you looking for a list of cultivars that have been caused by human intervention?

Overall, I don't think you're actually too confused.

[quote/] no unadulterated genes - so are you looking for a list of cultivars that have been caused by human intervention?
[/quote]
Short answer, Yes.

Jonathan_ wrote:

[quote/]

no unadulterated genes - so are you looking for a list of cultivars that have been caused by human intervention?

Short answer, Yes.[/quote]

It's going to include almost all of the cultivars if you consider human cross pollination and selecting seedlings as human intervention. I would think that it would be a shorter list to just see what was wild collected.

SundewWolf wrote:

Jonathan_ wrote:

[quote/]

no unadulterated genes - so are you looking for a list of cultivars that have been caused by human intervention?

Short answer, Yes.

It's going to include almost all of the cultivars if you consider human cross pollination and selecting seedlings as human intervention. I would think that it would be a shorter list to just see what was wild collected.[/quote]

Yes A list of what was wild collected would be nice. Anyone have one?