CULTIVAR NEWS!!!

WOOHOOOOOO!!!

So I emailed the International Carnivorous Plant Society, and received a reply from the person in charge of cultivar registration. It went like this:

Dear Drew,

Stability of cultivar characteristics is one of the main issues in registering cultivar names (NB: we are registering names, not plants) but this stability refers to the phenotype only and not to lineage nor to procedures of generation or maintenance. The means of propagation may be a useful recommendation in the context of the description but it is not mandatory that a plant was generated using a specific method in order to apply a specific cultivar name to this plant because the definition and meaning of any cultivar name is governed exclusively by the phenotype described in the original publication. In your case this means you must be careful to mention everything you consider essential for making your new cultivar a special plant in the description of said cultivar. Irrespective of how other plants may have been generated, if they meet these criteria of your description, they may be given the name you propose in the description.

If the progeny of self-pollinated plants show variation in the characteristics that define the cultivar, only the plants that match the original description do belong to the cultivar. The remaining plants that deviate from the original description do not belong to the cultivar although they share the same lineage from a technical perspective. This may generate problems if seeds and not mature plants are traded because the defining characteristics may not be detectable in the seeds. One way to deal with this situation is to declare the seed batch in question as "seeds from selfing [Your Cultivar Name]", or similar.

Do you know what this means??? It basically means that when you register a plant as a cultivar, you are registering the appearance of a plant, not a specific individual and its genes. Therefore, any plant in the world that looks like the description is now that cultivar. By that logic also, seeds from the original that may not be exactly identical are still the cultivar as long as they look the same.

Do you know what this means??? It means that tissue culture is not my only option for registering this plant. I can grow it from seeds. Which also means I get to have a lot more fun with this project. I'm not rushed to do things by the book! I can experiment with less valuable plants with less of a risk, because I don't need to clone this exact plant. I will of course try to, but it is not my only sample (which also means I can make more cultures of many different plants).

I learned this week that cheap aluminum pressure cookers from Walmart may not result in the best sterilization. However, I will just "cook" everything a little longer than I had said before to counteract this. I'm trying to keep my budget under $100, and an $80 pressure cooker would really affect that. So, I will make due for this project. This way everything I'm using is cheap and readily available.

Here's the current tally of things I had to buy that I am not borrowing from school or weren't already in my house:

Fertilizer: $6
Inositol: $11
Agar powder: $5
Distilled water: $2
Sterilization chemicals, spray bottle, and plastic box: $25
Pressure cooker: $35

Not bad. This weekend I'm going to try and dispense the liquid into whatever jars I have and sterilize them. The week after I will sterilize and add the samples. Let's hope it works!

A quick cell phone picture of the D. burmannii I'm hoping to register. As it has aged it's gotten this beautiful red color. It's huge for its species, too, at two inches across. They are normally around one inch in diameter.