FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I mean aside from cuttings and basil shoots as in say a nepenthes singalana x burkei, would a cross like that be able to make a flower? and if you had two one male, and one female, and you pollinated it would you get more seeds of that cross? are most crosses able to make seeds? or are they only able to be made by cuttings and tissue culture?

Yes it would! All nepenthes can flower.

Well kind of. You would get (singalana x burkei) x (singalana x burkei) or singalana x burkei F2. From what I’ve read it’s pretty much the same thing as the previous cross except you would get much more variation between seedlings.

Most crosses are indeed able to make seeds. The only sterile hybrids as far as I know are ventrata and dyeriana if I remember correctly. And yes, those ones are only available through TC and cuttings.

Camden wrote: ↑Fri Oct 20, 2023 1:18 am Yes it would! All nepenthes can flower.

Well kind of. You would get (singalana x burkei) x (singalana x burkei) or singalana x burkei F2. From what I’ve read it’s pretty much the same thing as the previous cross except you would get much more variation between seedlings.

Most crosses are indeed able to make seeds. The only sterile hybrids as far as I know are ventrata and dyeriana if I remember correctly. And yes, those ones are only available through TC and cuttings.

oh very interesting thank you for the answer, so if breeding two of the same cross would make an f2 of that cross with more variation, can they just keep going like a species would? as in could you have say an f10 or even more? or would it get to the point that it becomes a genetic dead end and becomes infertile? not that I am planning to do that lol, just wondering like if you put a hybrid out in the wild could it survive on sexual reproduction alone without any other nepenthes cross pollinating it?

Many species (especially plants) originate from different species sharing a range and breeding with each other. As the hybrids produced by the initial species breeding continue to breed, their traits become more uniform and eventually scientists who look at them may say "look, a new species!". Such a case is going on currently with sundews, Drosera tokaiensis.

If you put a singular hybrid into the wild, if it's near a population of wild plants it will breed with them and get its genes into the population, perhaps making that population a a variety of subspecies that may attain species status eventually. If you put a population of hybrids into the wild, they'll breed with each other and may eventually be considered a species. Constantly breeding offspring of the same two plants may cause inbreeding depression, but from what I've read it's not as prevalent in plants as in animals. But that's when the genepool becomes ridiculously small and harmful mutations pile up. Basically breeding a population into extinction due to their traits being poorly suited to surviving and reproducing.

Take all this with a grain of salt. I am just someone who went down too many internet rabbit holes.

Also, there's a lot of complex hybrids out there that are (thing x thing) x (thing x thing) and so on. Just a bunch of species being bred in a chain. You could feasibly breed all Nepenthes together into one mega hybrid if you had the time and drive. There's people out there dedicated to creating such hybrids and using those to create even more.