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Unknown hybrid of Nepenthes


Rodrigo

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Hi friends, this time I have a debt that is not mine alone, but almost every single Nepenthes growers in Brazil. It is as follows; many years ago (approximately 20 years) the cultivation of a call Nep was added N. x [mirabilis x gracillis].

The problem is that it does not look like this plant and the people here have concluded that the taxon was wrong and started calling it temporarily N. sp. "Spotted". So far so good, however it's been more than 10 years and no one has come to a conclusion about what the plants involved in the creation of this hybrid.

To have no idea what I'm talking about, I leave out some photos of this Nepenthes:

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And then, some veteran forum would know what possible plants that gave rise to this CP.

Best regards,

Rodrigo

Edited by Rodrigo
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Hi Rodrigo,

Trying to guess the parentage unless just for interest is a pointless excercise. A few times i've put my own primary hybrids on forums and very little has ever been guessed even close to being correct, so a long time i concluded it was not a good way to ID a hybrid nep. The only way to know what it was for certain would have been to have kept records.

Cant see much gracilis in it, for what its worth.

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I would like to start off with, I have no idea what it is.

But I can see some maxima or maybe alata in it, what do the larger traps look like (larger lowers not uppers), one of these as a parent would not be to far fetched if its a hybrid from 20years ago, if they are over 16cm in size then gracilis X mirabilis would be less likely.

Although that reddish leaf colouration is very common in Au N.Mirabilis, my mirabilis do it all of the time in sunny conditions, and the wings on the traps are also Mirabilis like, but in saying this gracilis and many other neps also do this.

A Maxima X Mirabilis doen not look like this, so maybe its a more complex hybrids (like (Maxima X gracilis) X mirabilis), and If you seach online for gracilis X mirabilis you find darker traps, but this may be due to which mirabilis and gracilis were used (e.g. a purple gracilis or a flecked)

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  • 2 months later...

N. x stewartii x N. gracilis? Looks like someone might have mistook a N. x stewartii for a N. mirabilis... I don't know what N. smilesii * N. gracilis looks... But N. smilesii used to be called N. mirabilis when it wasn't being called "thorelii".

Edited by Dave Evans
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Hi Rodrigo,

On rare occasions there are Neps in garden centres or the big stores in the UK.

I am sure that this is very similar to the plants that they tend to sell so possibly there is a tissue culture lab somewhere churning these out for the general market.

Cheers,

Steve

Edited by CephFan
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ive been buying dead and dying neps from garden centres, i put them in a small terraria to revive and then give them to Bristol botanical gardens as they have a hot house full of them, to date i know i have rescued hookerianas (which always pitcher really well but develop lots of brown patches on leaves) a couple of sopers? and at least a dozen i couldn't begin to guess at.

they are coming from some big companies in Holland who i have supply contracts with through my nursery, their unit prices on trays are stupid cheap, must be tissue cultured, they are doing the same with nearly every cp going, mature flowering named plants for less than £5 each at pos, i dread to think how cheap they would be at 10 trays x 12 units each

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Rodrigo,

If you can't get a name for it you may have to label it 'Nepenthes commercial hybrid' and then just enjoy it as a plant.

I rescued some poorly looking VFTs from a hardware store a couple of weeks ago. They were from TC, probably from one of the same giant nurseries in the Netherlands. I have labelled them as 'D. m commercial red' and there was a green one too. The same name has gone in my stock book; they're not fancy clones but nice plants all the same.

Cheers,

Steve

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Trying to guess the parentage unless just for interest is a pointless exercise. A few times i've put my own primary hybrids on forums and very little has ever been guessed even close to being correct, so a long time (ago) i concluded it was not a good way to ID a hybrid nep. The only way to know what it was for certain would have been to have kept records.

Cant see much gracilis in it, for what its worth.

Hi Manders,

I agree and disagree with both of these ideas. One problem is people are using mis-ID'ed plants to make their hybrids and thus the "records are not certain" and there is also stray pollen which is an issue that will never "go away". For example, most thorelii hybrids are any and everything not N. thorelii. Same for most N. alata hybrids. We have maxima's that were mistook for N. eymae.

Then we have mislabeled hybrids spreading confusion on a whole other level.

And so if you ask any of these confused people to ID something for you, how is that going to work? Working for twenty years but with the wrong information, you have details wrong or even backward in your head. People can end up having a lot of experience at getting it wrong. They might be able to breed beautiful hybrids, but taxonomy just isn't their cup of tea or the information wasn't available to them.

The general pitcher shape including that of the peristome does have some N. gracilis appearance to it. That is actually factual, but Nepenthes species share a lot of the same DNA so it could simply appear to have gracilis in it but not have any. Some forms of N. maxima can make pitchers that superficially approach those of N. gracilis at least from certain angles as they both have tubular pitchers. I saw a photograph of this hybrid and the way the leaves were growing in the rosette strongly reminds of N. veitchii, but I don't see a hint of that species in the pitchers... So I think that is just another superficial association in my head.

But this is a older hybrid and the possible combinations are quite limited compared to what we see being produced these days. It does look a lot like a N. stewartii combined with a species or another Victorian hybrid.

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