FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

On the discord server someone mentioned that there’s a couple cultivars like ‘Holland Red’ and ‘red Burgundy’ that can be propagated through seed or divisions... why is that? I thought they were supposed to be exact clones to be a cultivar. Wouldn’t it be a “strain” if it was produced through seed? I don’t even know, someone please explain. Lol.

You understood it correctly: cultivars can not be propagated by seed. Any plants germinated from those seeds revert to "Typical" no matter how much they resemble their parent. All cultivars must be propagated by vegetative methods in order to qualify for the name.

That’s what I’m saying but people in the discord seem to disagree.

Adrien wrote: ↑Fri Apr 02, 2021 2:47 am On the discord server someone mentioned that there’s a couple cultivars like ‘Holland Red’ and ‘red Burgundy’ that can be propagated through seed or divisions... why is that? I thought they were supposed to be exact clones to be a cultivar. Wouldn’t it be a “strain” if it was produced through seed? I don’t even know, someone please explain. Lol.

Taxonomically speaking - Things get messy.

Cultivar is the lowest-rank taxonomy (below species and subspecies and form and anything else). They are also made through various ways (I grew hercules x self x baineskloof, soaked em in hydroxyamine and sowed them, 6mo later now I have a cultivar being published this June).

The issue with cultivars is there are often many, many wrong things with them.

Example 1: The cultivar where a form should have been named. D. californica 'Othello', named for the green plants, inspired by Othello, the criminally jealous general. While the epithet of this is nice and all, B. Rice mentions that the plant is 'othello' if it is Antho free. This is generally called f. viridescens (in other plants, even in S. leuco), but in Darlingtonia, this form is replaced by Othello, a cultivar. Nevertheless, if you find a field of antho free D. californica, you are free to sell them as Othellos.

Example 2: The cultivar where no cultivar should be named. An exceptional cross like P. x aphrodite could be an example. They registered the entire cross of agnata x moctezumae that they carried out. As such, there are probably north of 1000 clones of Aphrodite. This is why I personally believe cultivars should be hand-selected plants and not a whole cross.

As a general rule, selfing a plant is never an option you even could not self a plant that allows cultivars to be named by seed and call it the cultivar name. This seed is genetically compromised, and seed should always be called 'x self'. If you have two individuals that are not of the same clone you can cross them and it will be labeled xOP (x Other Plant) or just write Other plant x Plant if need be.

However, if your cultivar's rules are met (as in Othello) or it says you can be propped by seed, you are *technically* allowed to label the seed as a cultivar.

Thank you for listening to this guide about why cultivars are terrible and we CP growers should be able to use Greges instead. Please write to Jan Brittnacher about using greges. It would make life so much better.

@hungrycarnivores- you're right. The D. californica 'Othello' thing has always bothered me. That should be D. californica f. viridescens, not a cultivar. I know for a fact that 'Othello' isn't the only wild antho free cobra to exist, as I found another AF population in OR that I'm going to check out this June.

Another problem is D. capensis 'Hercules'. In its ICPS registration it states that it should be propagated only via vegetative means. However, 'Hercules' has been selfed so many times labels are starting to look like {([Hercules x self] x self) x self} and so on, and the plants basically look the same. It seems as if growing conditions have much more to do with it than the actual genetics. Thus, Carson (who registered the plant) plans to amend the description of the cultivar to possibly allow seed grown progeny.

@hungrycarnivores- and last thing. Hx 'Tequila' is also an entire grex that was registered. I talked with Geoff about it and the heli 'Tequila' we see in the states is just a single clone that made it over here. All the other clones (some of which, arguably look better than the US one) were sold to another nursery overseas. It would be much much simpler if a single clone was registered as a cultivar instead of an entire grex.

When a cultivar is registered, I believe the registrant gets to choose how the plant should be propagated to maintain its genetic integrity. Most cultivar descriptions explicitly state that they should be propagated via vegetative methods to preserve the integrity of the cultivar. But interestingly some don't! It really comes down to whatever trait or traits are chosen to describe the cultivar and if it is possible to preserve them exactly via sexual reproduction. For most cultivars, it isn't possible to get something that looks identical to the parent plant, but for some it is.

Things like the Sarracenia leucophylla 'Hurricane Creek White' can be propagated by seed. I knew there were a few flytraps with that propagation distinction as well, including 'Holland Red' and 'Red Burgundy' which is why I stopped growing them years ago. Though I did get one of both of those specimens from Europe initially then learned that they had been grown from seed and were really nothing more than a red-leafed Venus flytrap. Though the 'Holland Red' that I cloned was an interesting plant with very long petioles.

From my understanding, seeds can produce plants with traits of the cultivar parents, but it is very random. Most will be typical, but some will have the special trait you are looking for. It's kind of a waste of time, though. Cloning is the only guarantee, so people stick with that.

As previously mentioned it all depends on what the cultivar description includes for. I agree that to keep the cultivar genetics and even appearance 'true' it should be by vegetative propagation only. However, taking Adrian Slacks 'Evendine' as an example which is S. leucophylla x (flava x purpurea) he does not mention in the cultivar description that the plant should be reproduced by vegetative methods only, consequently, there are hundreds of seed-grown plants all genetically different and all very different looking to the picture that Slack shows in his book, but all legitimately bearing the cultivar status as 'Evendine'.
See the difference in the various plants in the photos here.
http://cpphotofinder.com/sarracenia-evendine-2812.html

Cheers
Steve