FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

The topic of variegated flytraps potentially being virus infected has come up in a few threads here on the FlytrapCare forums:
http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/dracu ... t8074.html
http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/spott ... t7223.html
http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/new-p ... tml#p71791
http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/vft-virus-t5774.html

Now there's a pretty good discussion going on over on the CPUK forum about another variegated plant that Geoff (FlytrapCare forum member multiclone) grows:
http://www.cpukforum.com/forum/index.ph ... opic=39319

For anyone that wants to add a variegated flytrap to their collection, I highly encourage you to do some background reading on the subject matter of variegation in plants and viruses. A couple of common misconceptions are:

* The variegated plant grows vigorously and divides. Any plant with a virus is weak and sickly. Therefore this plant doesn't have a virus. THIS IS AN INCORRECT ASSUMPTION
Many viruses are non-fatal and plants can even grow almost normally with some viruses. Other viruses are asymptomatic (meaning symptoms aren't exhibited) or can lie dormant in cells for a long time.

* The variegated plant came from a very experienced grower. Surely they would know if the plant had a virus and not propagate it. THIS IS AN INCORRECT ASSUMPTION
No one can look at a plant and determine if it has a virus or not. There are test that can be done in a lab to potentially determine if a plant has a virus, but without testing no one can say definitively that a plant is virus free. The fact is that variegation is well-known to be caused by viruses. So any plant that exhibits variegation should be suspect.

I quoted this email in the CPUK forum, but I want to quote it here as well. I wrote my friend John Brittnacher, a long time CPer and ICPS Webmaster and seed bank manager, and sent him links to this thread, several other threads with photos of variegated flytraps and the CPPhotoFinder page for "Spotty":
http://cpphotofinder.com/dionaea-spotty-sl017-2419.html

Here is his response:

John Brittnacher wrote:There is no question in my mind that is from a virus or a transposable element which is essentially a broken virus integrated into the DNA. What a university lab would do first is to demonstrate the infection is transmissible. That would indicate it is a virus.

It could be tobacco mosaic virus. The usual way for plants to get tobacco mosaic virus and other tobacco viruses is from contact with humans with a nicotine addiction. It infects plants not related to tobacco:

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distributi ... g1168.html

Or it could be another virus, there are plenty of them:

http://www.dpvweb.net/dpv/dpvtaxonidx.php

I wouldn't accept plants from anyone who has those plants and would not be surprised if all the varieties they have start getting infected although there is probably genetic variation for susceptibility. A similar thing happened in Tricyrtis. A number of nurseries had to destroy all their Tricyrtis plants after they got over the initial excitement of new varieties:

http://www.perennialnursery.com/tricyrtisvirus.html

The virus has since been identified:

http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/public ... 115=190398

I've read on CPUK forums that some of the variegated cultivars are in fact viruses (including spotty) and some are not, but I didn't see any real data. A lot of the links in the thread were broken so a lot of the information was piecemeal and hard to put together. It seems at least some of the cases of variegation (and particularly sickness) were caused by a fungal infection, diagnosed by a lab. Considering a functional test is pretty simple and easy, and I still haven't seen the results of one after a little bit of time looking, I am suspicious. While there are a lot of genetically interesting reasons why the plants may be variegated, I agree with not getting any plants that even have a possibility of being infected with a virus.

wouldnt a cheap home test be to grab a couple of healthy typical vft's to use as guinea pigs, mash up an infected leaf, and smear the infected "leaf mash" onto one of the healthy typicals?

to go a step further, i'd put a small nick in a healthy leaf and rub infected leaf mash onto it.

give it a month, see which one is the winner.

Oblivion wrote:wouldnt a cheap home test be to grab a couple of healthy typical vft's to use as guinea pigs, mash up an infected leaf, and smear the infected "leaf mash" onto one of the healthy typicals?

That would certainly provide definitive results if the "guinea pig" flytraps started showing symptoms. But some viruses can take a very long time to become symptomatic.

The nicotine related ailment is amazingly interesting.

I'm feeling an experiment coming up