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S. x umlauftiana


Rob-Rah

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Earlier this year I accquired a young plant of this hybrid [(S. purpurea x S. psitticina) x (S. leucophylla x S. psitticina)]. It seems to be mostly decumbent. I have waited until the autumn to see if any of the uprighness of leucophylla shows through as it has done splendidly with some of my other hybirds, but it still looks not very different from psitticina - though nice and colourful all the same.

Does anyone else grow this hybrid? The pics online I have seen look very different to mine. Is it likely to a maturity issue, or is this a plant that varies a great deal according to the constitution of the grandparents used?

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But we're at atage where even the named hybirds seem to diverge

Seedling offspring of hybrids (named or not) often highly variable.

The difference between offspring of a named hybrid and a cultivar, is that the named hybrid is simply a plant in which the parents are specified; whereas, a cultivar must be reproduced asexually and is a clone (genetic duplicate) of the parent.

In the case of

(purpurea*psittacina)*(leucophylla*psittacina),

which is also called S. x umlauftiana, there is no specificity of which are the seed and pollen parents, only that this is the known breeding. Consequently, the offspring has a probability of expressing the full range of genetic variability expressed in each parent. Since psittacina is a parent of each parent, there is a good probability that the traits of psittacina will show in the offspring.

A clone (not seedling) of a particular plant of S. x umlauftiana will be genetically identical to the parent plant.

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Did you get your plant from Sarracenia Nurseries? I have a couple from them and so far they are both fairly decumbent, though the biggest only has pitchers about 12cm long. I know Chris Crowe is seriously into hybridising so any upright plants may have been held back for propagation/further hybridising.

It wouldn't surprise me if the growth habit with these sorts of hybrid offspring follows the "bell shaped curve", ie the bulk of the offspring being intermediate with only a few at the extremes - ie fully upright or fully decumbent. If this was the case you would be beating the odds to pick up a fully upright plant!

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Yes, it did come from Chris (aren't some of his own complex hybrids stunning? - I hope they appear for sale at some point). I had a very long look at his plants, l but I didn't see any more upright ones, either with the general sales stock or elsewhere - though I didn't think to ask specifically at the time! I will wait and see what mine's like in a few years - like yours, it's a small plant still.

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