FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Carnies wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:18 pm @Matt, Whoops, it is the cupped trap picture. Sorry about that.

OK, that makes way more sense! Thanks for the correction

@Matt I am not sure who runs Wicked Botany but on their Facebook page they say they want to remain social media free and only have a page to prevent imposters. I’ll let you guys know how they come. They come in 1-2 inch pots and the plants may be too small to show any cultivar characteristics so it may be a while.

Sounds good, thanks, Adrien!

@Matt Craig got back with me and said:
“ Hi there Adrien in my experience I have a lot of CCCP Destructions that are stable for over a year without any problems still stable making deformed traps. Same as the CCCP Outer Limits, CCCP Toxic, CCCP Tasmanian Devil. Craig”

I ordered one from his eBay store and will soon make a thread once I receive it

That's good initial news. I'll reserve being too excited about it given it has only been in cultivation for a short amount of time and no one else I know grows it at this point to validate the stability. Most of those clones would grow with the odd traps for at least a year out of tissue culture for me. But each year they make fewer and fewer of the traps and by the 3rd, 4th, or 5th year they very rarely have any odd-looking traps at all.

Again, I'd be careful with anything coming from Craig. Years ago he was selling plants labeled as B52 on eBay but in the product description, he wrote something like "These are B52 plants that I grew from seed." or something like that. So that means that they weren't actually B52s.

Check out this listing:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Carnivorous-Ve ... 2757949920

He states that TTN = "True to Name" but I've never heard that used to describe cultivars before. It's either a genetic copy of a plant (i.e. a cultivated variety) or it is a genetically unique plant, which means that it isn't the cultivar and the name of the parent plant shouldn't be used in that very confusing way. I have no idea what "true to name" means but to me, it would imply that it isn't a genetic copy but rather something started from seed that grows similar to the parent plant.

Then compare it to this listing, which does appear to be an FTS Maroon Monster as far as I can tell:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dionaea-m-FTS- ... 3516391744

Confused? Me too. In any case -- use caution when choosing who to get your plants from if you want legitimate cultivars!

Thanks for the info, Matt, it doesn’t bother me too much if this specific plant isn’t a clone, if I can get a plant that produces those weird traps it is fine. I just won’t ever sell it off as a cultivar if that’s the case. If it’s something genetic maybe I can get seedlings similar and produce my own cultivar that are exact clones.

Yes I see the differences in the ‘FTS Maroon Monster’ he has listed and the ones I have listed (I am SnappyPlants). In the first picture of his, some of the plants in the bottom right have green leaves with red traps which doesn’t seem right. I also see other plants that I like from him, such as “outer limits”, but i am a bit skeptical after what you have told me. I’ll be getting freaky star as an alternative for both “outer limits” and “biohazard”.

And to be quite honest, he came up with so many new cultivars out of no where, that to me, it seems like he just grew a bunch of seed and labeled them as cultivars to sell off.

Right, I totally get what you're after with the CCCP Destruction. If it is stable, it will be a definite improvement over the other flanged-trap cultivars. I just wanted to make sure that you were aware that buying "cultivars" from Craig can be problematic. I consider his propagation and naming methods, specifically when he uses the acronym "TTN", somewhat unclear and problematic to maintaining the true cultivars if they are not clones.

Adrien wrote:Yes I see the differences in the ‘FTS Maroon Monster’ he has listed and the ones I have listed (I am SnappyPlants). In the first picture of his, some of the plants in the bottom right have green leaves with red traps which doesn’t seem right.

Exactly. That's because they're most likely seed-grown flytraps with FTS Maroon Monster as one of the parents.

Adrien wrote:I also see other plants that I like from him, such as “outer limits”, but i am a bit skeptical after what you have told me. I’ll be getting freaky star as an alternative for both “outer limits” and “biohazard”.

Yeah, Freaky Star is the one I chose out of that whole bunch of plants. It's 100% stable and the most vigorous of them for me in Oregon. Freaky Star, Kinky Wave, Firemouth, and Biohazard are largely equivalent in appearance but Biohazard isn't at all stable. The other 3 on that list were very stable for me but I couldn't really tell Kinky Wave and Firemouth apart from Freaky Star, so that's the one I chose to grow.

Adrien wrote:And to be quite honest, he came up with so many new cultivars out of no where, that to me, it seems like he just grew a bunch of seed and labeled them as cultivars to sell off.

Yep! You got it!! He's been doing it for years too. A few of his plants do seem to warrant a name but I have yet to see one that is unique enough from already named cultivars that I'd consider naming it myself. I have germinated a ton of Coquillage seed over the years and got several dozen plants that look exactly like his "CCCP Tasmanian Devil" but I thought they were far too similar to Coquillage for me to want to name and distribute. We sold them off as seed-grown flytraps over the years instead. Unless a seed-grown flytrap is significantly different from other existing cultivars that are already named and in circulation, I don't see the point in creating another named cultivar. There are already a ridiculous number of named Venus flytraps!!

How stable are “Long red fingers” and “Cross teeth”, which is the the more vigorous clone? I have around 6 long red fingers but they are incredibly small. I bought it as a starter size last year and the health declined due to over watering, it did survive but came back with many many divisions that are extremely small, around 1mm. I don’t think I’ll be able to fully enjoy it this year but I see that Jeremiah has Cross teeth available and would like to know the differences, thanks.

Adrien wrote:How stable are “Long red fingers” and “Cross teeth”, which is the the more vigorous clone?

They're both 100% stable. Every trap looks odd-shaped with somewhat fused teeth. Long Red Fingers might be slightly more vigorous but not by much. I just prefer it because it gets much better coloration.

Personally, I'd pass on Cross Teeth if you already have Long Red Fingers unless, of course, you just want to grow every named flytrap

Just wanted to add my 2 cents after buying from Craig. I do feel a lot of his stuff is either similar to something else already on the market or a renamed cultivar. I bought some stuff from him on auction last year and destruction was 1 of the plants I won on an auction. So far every trap has been wildy mutated. Seems stable and an ok grower. TTN makes me suspicious as well. Luckily, I was able to win most of the auctions for next to nothing so I shall report how things go. A lot of his named stuff just looks like a seedgrown that he slapped a name on. That tasmanian devil is not worth what he's charging. He's got a cultivar called Orca that looks very similar to whale. He also never produces an adult specimen of plants when I ask. I think he's just burning n churning seedgrown/tc plants.

http://imgur.com/gallery/5eg4PDU

VFTNoob wrote:I bought some stuff from him on auction last year and destruction was 1 of the plants I won on an auction. So far every trap has been wildy mutated. Seems stable and an ok grower.

That's good news so far! I grew Mirror, Mirror x Mirror, Cerberus, and a few other flanging flytraps over the years and none were stable for more than 4 or 5 years. Maybe Craig found a winner!

Doubt it. Ive had this plant a few months haha. We'll see if it grows out of its traits. Worst case scenario, if it turns 100% typical, I'll just leaf pull the entire plant

Carnies wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 5:16 pmOh! Wicked Botany, tell me how the plants arrive! I was thinking of getting some plants from them.

I bought 2 DC-XL plants from them last spring. One pot already had a decent-sized division, so I got 3 plants from the deal. They're decent plants so far, waiting to see what they do this year.

Matt wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:02 pmI heard of Wicked Botany for the first time about a year ago. Never ordered from them. Any idea who runs that website? Like @Carnies, I'd be interested in knowing how the plants are from them.

From Wicked Botany:

Rest assured when ordering from us, you're making the safest choice. My husband and I are both biologists. I teach genetics and he teaches microbiology.

From LinkedIn:

David Keesling
Business Owner at Wicked Botany
Lake Charles, Louisiana area

I own and operate Wicked Botany, a carnivorous plant nursery which primarily uses tissue culture and micropropagation for rare and endangered plant production.

Master of Science -- Biology
University of Kentucky

Matt wrote:

VFTNoob wrote:I bought some stuff from him on auction last year and destruction was 1 of the plants I won on an auction. So far every trap has been wildy mutated. Seems stable and an ok grower.

That's good news so far! I grew Mirror, Mirror x Mirror, Cerberus, and a few other flanging flytraps over the years and none were stable for more than 4 or 5 years. Maybe Craig found a winner!

How does that work? It can just grow out of its trait and become a normal flytrap again? Thats pretty interesting....

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On Craigs recent FB posts he is making sure to add that his plants are TC’ed through Leaf pulling and are in fact clones. That’s a good thing and his plants should be legit.

His toxic seems really cool, which other cultivars are similar? I’m going to assume freaky star can get like it