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TC defects: The latest bugbear of CP growers?

  • #41
Okay let me rephrase myself;
Now in hawaii there are lots of seed grown neps
now the USA well the continental US there are not many seed grown neps I mean there are but not that many compared to whats in hawaii. So if they (theory) can make TC seem bad or horrendous then since they are the seed grown hub(remember I said generally many people have seed grown neps) they have something special and so they will get a good amount of business by exporting to the 48 states or directly selling .
So thats a theorey...

I don't think there is some conspiracy going on to promote business sales. I agree with Pyro and PK which was explained here:

The problem is that the Nep freaks are actively being distributed, much to the distress of avid Nep growers. Those avid individuals are very vocal about their displeasure with these TC freaks and are saying so loudly. But their displeasure is not so much that the defects occurred (because they are going to occur as we have established) but that they are perpetuated and distributed. Unfortunately, in their discourse there has been a corruption of communication. They are aware that the freak is the result of a singular, low incidence occurrence that has been "xeroxed" hundreds of times over but when they speak out about "all these TC mutants" people who are less savvy of the situation get the impression that each of the mutants is the result of an independent event (i.e. a new occurrence/produce of high occurrence) rather than that same single occurrence writ large...

xvart.
 
  • #42
I do not know that PK necessarily agrees with me on that X as he has not chimed in since I posted.

It was just that some of the things that PK said that got me thinking along certain lines and that ended up with me making that explanation.

He may agree with that statement and then again he may not. We shall just have to wait and see if he choses to reply.
 
  • #43
Clint,

Read my post on petpitcher. I ignored your points because 1) I've already covered all of them multiple times, 2) regardless of how you feel, your feelings aren't reason enough to really warrant a reply. You arguments about cost and availability aren't even good ones. In short, tenuis from cuttings = same price as trusmadiensis. Sp. Vikings are all from seed, and they are infinitely more available than lots of TC'd plants.

I don't think Pyro posted in the intention of starting a TC vs SG thread. It was more a discussion of the possible misdiagnoses of problems Nepenthes have as TC-related issues
Agreed. Again, I refer to the post on petpitcher. Seed grown and TC should exist in concert, but I don't like when people get a TC boner, because it's not the savior of our hobby or anything like that.

Now on to the rest...

We shall just have to wait and see if he choses to reply.
Cut me some slack! Hitting the bar last night = me waking up late ;).

All I am arguing is that, whenever there seems to be anything wrong with a plant, a huge number of people will immediately jump to TC as a cause as if it were a fact that TC induced problems were occurring at some phenomenally high rate
Depends on the clone. Sometimes, yes, there is a defect that crops up in every 10,000 plants or so, but sometimes its every single plant. I think all the examples I listed besides variegation and frequent self propagation exist in every single plant of those particular clones. I agree that there are people who will automatically say it is a TC defect, which usually isn't the case. People who do do that I think generally don't know what they're talking about, but they see other people do it and want to "jump on the bandwagon". There are a few people here I've seen that feel like they just have to reply to everything, regardless of if its right or not.

How is it that someone who has never deflasked any material or done any TC work at all could have more knowledge of the incidence of mutations than someone who has handled hundreds (or thousands if you want to take rattler's estimation) of TC plants?
As sad as it sounds, I live for neps. If there's something to be known about neps, I most likely know it. I'm not trying to come off as arrogant or anything, that's just how it is. I spend hours daily reading about them, etc. I (in all likelihood) probably know far more "behind the scenes" stuff and "secrets" than anyone here, with the exception of philcula. Lots of big hitters privately tell me lots of things.
It's also irrelevant IMO because all you're doing is deflasking them. You're essentially slowly opening a container. So what? If you're good at it, you're a good deflasker, not an expert on the frequency of mutations/aberrations (not saying I am either btw). I realized you've deflasked lots of other stuff besides neps, but I don't know anything about anything else, so I won't even try to pretend I do. Whatever I talk about is concerning neps, since that's all I know/care about.

the plants revert to normal growth when removed form TC
There are rajahs in the "rajah patch" that are still very rapidly self-propagating years after being removed from TC. I don't remember the exact details but it sticks around for a long time. Will they revert after a decade? Who knows, but some continue to behave like that years later. You say tomato, I say problem.

people who are less savvy of the situation
x2. Out of all the TC neps there are, there are comparatively few with problems.

do you have any source for this information? Or is it more anecdotal? I only ask because I have never heard this data put forth before and I think it bears some following up on.

In my admittedly limited experience, of the few plants I have had flower four have been female and only two male.
Sure. Multiple people who very frequently see neps in the wild (and one more I'd rather not name). Talk to Robert, Longor, Suska, etc. When you see neps in the wild as much as they do "i.e. have them growing wild behind your house even....), I wouldn't just call that anecdotal. Sure, it's not published in a journal, but it's definitely good enough. With the exception of eusocial insects and a certain kind of mite (only 2 examples I can think of), most species of plants and animals stay as close as possible to a 1:1 ratio. With the 2 exceptions, almost everything is between 5:1 and 1:1. Again, no journal or anything, but its more like basic observation. Everyone knows that, but you don't need something to prove it once you've seen it enough.
I've flowered 8 or 9 things - all male. 90% of my collection is unknown gender, but out of 80somethingish neps, I've got 3 known females. And trust me, I try my hardest to get females when they are available.

they can only keep between 8-15 lines from any given batch, which isn't superb numbers but it is better than 1-2.
Why aren't they selling them on a large scale? They'd probably make pretty good profits....the community as a whole (at least the more important growers) are totally unsatisfied with the one clone of a species that is circulating. As big as BE is, they only keep 1 clone of some things. I would find it extremely hard to believe that that many species/hybrids only had 1 seed germinate in vitro.

About the weak clones....
Obviously we don't get all the freaks....of course some (most?) are removed. However, The fact that I was able to think of that many "freaks" off the top of my head is unsettling. Every commercial nep lab has a few freaks (except for EP). My point was that these clones should never be sold. Sure, when there is a problem with the flowers, the lab will probably release the clone, because they don't have time to grow the plants for 3-5 years first. However, when there are problems like the bump in the ramispina, or the ventrata with goofy lids, they should be immediately destroyed, and never made available for sale. This would never happen with Wistuba though as his plants are the size of mosquitoes, so I'm sure there are plenty of defects not noticeable at that point.

On the 2 posts above me....
I do agree. The people that have the clones with these aberrations are very vocal about it, as I think they should be. Some of these defects are TOTALLY unacceptable, yet these plants are still being sold. I realize labs put a lot of time and effort in, but instead of getting angry and defensive when people are unhappy with inferior product, they should fix it by replacing it with a "normal" clone. Agreed on corruption of communication, or misunderstanding on the part of the "masses". There aren't a whole hell of a lot of people I'd consider in the upper echelon of the nep community, and I mean growers and just "minds" so to speak. Maybe about 1%. Hell I'm not even that good of a grower, though I have a ton of nep knowledge. Anyway, that leaves 99% of the community that doesn't understand these types of issues as well, if really at all. However when they see frequent public discussions about this, etc...well it's like playing telephone if you get my drift.

I shouldn't have used quick reply. Typing in this tiny box gets annoying with a long reply lol.
 
  • #44
Desirable plant, or not

:censor: Anyone and everyone growing and propagating plants has the ultimate influence in what they produce, simply by what they choose to acquire and grow. Also by what they choose to propagate and share (commercial concerns included). Deciding for themselves which plants they will add to their personal collections, and which plants they will propagate to share with others. This is how a wider variety of wild plants, and plants produced in cultivation find places in various collections.

I have, and use my own criteria for choosing which plants I obtain and maintain in my own collection. I also use my own sense of aesthetics to help me make these sorts of decisions.

My personal sense of aesthetics may inspire me to collect plants that are inherently weak and barely able to survive under the best of cultural conditions -- that would be my choice to make. I may also be inspired to collect only Nepenthes plants of the male gender, or perhaps only of the female gender -- these too would be my choices to make. We each should be allowed the freedom to exercise our individual aesthetics to choose what we wish to acquire and propagate within our personal and individual collections.
 
  • #45
Wow! I almost literally spit my drink all over the keyboard when I read your reply. You really floored me. All I can say is that if you can't give me the time of day, then I guess the feeling is mutual.
 
  • #46
I'll discuss facts, not feelings...and we've already covered this multiple times before. I already know what you're going to say before you even say it. I can even guess your responses to anything I say. And looking at your last post or two, it'd be a lot easier to talk to you if you were a little less militant about it. "Get rid of your collection and start from seed and cuttings?" Come on now. It at least strongly seems to me that you are thinking with emotions instead of logic. You'll sit there and tell me how TC makes everything way more widely available and way cheaper, I'll present multiple scenarios where that isn't true, you won't believe me even though I definitely know what I'm talking about, and then we'll end up getting no where. I don't see a point in pursuing it, really.

Haven't I taught everyone yet that making blanket statements in Nepenthes culture is never a good idea?
 
  • #47
Feelings? I don't have an emotional attachment to this issue, true me.

I also have not seen the multiple scenarios, but, whatever. Have a nice day.
 
  • #48
"JLAP,
Rainforest - love him or hate him, he's one of the top 10 growers in the world, and has either the biggest, or second biggest (after Leilani) collection in the US. Even Leilani labels him as "the most innovative and controversial grower on the scene today". The guy has literally thousands of plants, of multiple clones and from seed. Nothing that comes out of his mouth is unfounded. The guy has more experience than you and I combined ever will, so dismiss what he says as "crazy" or "fanatical" is truly a joke. "

Hi Ron,
I do not think anybody can refute this. If anyone has lingered on the Nepenthes focused forums, Leilani has some of the finest plants on this side of the planet. I knew RF had a lot of plants, but I had no idea it was that many. I love seeing his photos-I just get tired of so many posts being a bash against tc, and it can come off as fanatical, to those who do not know him as well as you.
I might have 1000s of plants if I lived in a climate where I could grow them outside year round(as long as I have been around, lol).
Now for the top 10 growers in the World: Who are the rest and how do we get the trading cards(especially their rookie season)? What can I get for 1987 Mansell?
Sorry, I could not resist.
:jester:
Since this thread is about mutants, is N. 'Scarlett Splash,' the variegated N. x coccinea, a plant originating from tc? Anybody remember the origin? One grower has reported his has lost it's variegation.

Cheers,

Joe

PS I liked your new aquisitions in the other post-might have to PM you about those.
 
  • #49
He does like to repeat himself :D (but hell, I do it too).
I don't take his word as gospel or anything, but when someone has say 15 sanguinea from 3 different TC sources and from seed, and can compare them all, to ignore (or dismiss as fanatical w/ no consideration) their opinion on vigor, temp tolerance, ease of growing, etc, would be, well....pretty dumb! I think what he's trying to say, is that TC is good in certain instances, but weak clones and single clones should not be tolerated, with which I couldn't agree more.

I also wish I could throw plants outside, rig up a drip line, and not worry about them...That would be the life!

Now for the top 10 growers in the World: Who are the rest and how do we get the trading cards(especially their rookie season)?
IMHO: RFC, Leilani, Philcula, neps, The Mansells, yamada, Sunbelle, Caps, C. Klein, and then a three-way tie between Joel, Suska and Fauzi. It's hard to pick just 10. Those are the ones that have always stood out to me. Hope I didn't offend anyone by leaving them out....
Tony P. was great, but he seems to have been MIA for about a year and a half.

Trading cards sounds like a great idea though. I think I've only seen like 3 of those people's faces though lol.

PS: Thank you ;)
 
  • #50
PK, yah left out Jeremiah Harris...........
 
  • #51
Indeed. Definitely him too (I forgot, sorry!). Like I said....hard to narrow it down to 10. I'd need side-by-side comparisons of the same plants or something. Or possibly some kind of categories.

That's just the people I know about though. There are some great "secret" growers (i.e. not on the forums) in the US, Germany, and Japan. I didn't even know about Yamada until a year or so ago, but his plants are absolutely fantastic.
 
  • #52
Ok to hell with a top 10. I've got to mention Phill Mann and osmosisuk. Top 15? :D
 
  • #53
I know there is an anti-TC crowd out there, but I don't think that's why people call out mutations as originating from TC. Pyro, you yourself admitted that deformations often show up widely among distributed TC'd CP clones. I would posit that most growers observe their first visible mutations in the ubiquitous grocery-store rescue plants. These plants are produced in bulk at the lowest possible price, putting them at much higher than normal risk for mutation or disfigurement of the growth stems. Contemporary TC technique presents very little chance of detrimental mutation, but if you've worked in a TC lab, you absolutely must admit that a botched TC job will usually turn out some really sick plants. It's the same with modern medicine. Just because doctors remove appendices every day doesn't mean you can grab a scalpel and start cutting into your buddy without any ill consquences. Certain procedures must be observed for consistently successful results.
Chance mutation happens so rarely, and is either totally detrimental or invisible; amateur growers just don't know what they're looking for most of the time. (I notice that a lot of the most avid participants in this thread are experienced collectors that have access to some of the highest-quality plants in trade today.) Feathers fall slower than bowling balls, right? You might never notice that isn't true unless you've spent time in a vacuum.
~Joe
 
  • #54
Cut me some slack! Hitting the bar last night = me waking up late ;).

I did not mean it as a slight. Figure there are a number of possible reasons why you may not have replied. You might have agreed and so felt there was no need. You might have disagreed but felt there was no point in continuing the discussion. You might have decided to take a week long sojourn to Mexico and forgotten about the thread... Or any thing else... Was more just trying to say you were under no obligation to continue the conversation so any further replies would be by your choice when you had the time.

Depends on the clone. Sometimes, yes, there is a defect that crops up in every 10,000 plants or so, but sometimes its every single plant. I think all the examples I listed besides variegation and frequent self propagation exist in every single plant of those particular clones.

In this case I think it is still that the mutant trait was a one of thing. It is just that that one freak plant was the single plant that was kept by the specific lab and therefore it is being mass produced which makes it look common. Take for example that hunchback ramispina; it is the only line being put out by that nursery. It was the one plant that was kept and it is the only thing they have to propagate from so they just keep making more and more of them. If they have kept multiples lines (or if they had even had better luck and not picked that one hunchback freak) then we would likely not see hunchback freak all that often. This is why I came round to my end decision. If there were only a few lines of VFT and one of them had the bad luck to have winnowed their line down to a single progenitor that was a cup trap then all the plants they put out form that point would be cup traps. So, like you have said, it comes down to the need for more clones to be available. And I can understand and agree with that sentiment.

I agree that there are people who will automatically say it is a TC defect, which usually isn't the case. People who do do that I think generally don't know what they're talking about, but they see other people do it and want to "jump on the bandwagon".

That was what I was driving at here. II feel like this is causing a new myth to be perpetuated. And I was hoping to find the root cause so that the myth itself could be reined in. As you pointed out, there are numerous examples of mythes that got out of hand to the point that they were just accepted as "fact"

As sad as it sounds, I live for neps. If there's something to be known about neps, I most likely know it. I'm not trying to come off as arrogant or anything, that's just how it is. I spend hours daily reading about them, etc. I (in all likelihood) probably know far more "behind the scenes" stuff and "secrets" than anyone here, with the exception of philcula. Lots of big hitters privately tell me lots of things.

I have no doubt that you know things that others do not. Part of this hobby that I enjoy is the networking aspect. And I do not think it sad that you devote yourself to a single genus, plenty of people do that too. It helps to bring more information to the fore when people "study" a subject enough that they can contribute to the whole.

It's also irrelevant IMO because all you're doing is deflasking them. You're essentially slowly opening a container. So what? If you're good at it, you're a good deflasker, not an expert on the frequency of mutations/aberrations (not saying I am either btw). I realized you've deflasked lots of other stuff besides neps, but I don't know anything about anything else, so I won't even try to pretend I do. Whatever I talk about is concerning neps, since that's all I know/care about.

Okay, I think I can see your point here. I still disagree but it is more a matter of differing opinion I think. Yes, I am deflasking but that is not all I am doing. I do not just firing them right out the door (yes, sometimes I do when I am strapped for space and just need to move the material out) but a lot of the time I hang on to batches and grow them out (for example, I had 50+ lowii going for 6 months or so before I started sending them out.) What I was getting at is, if gross morphological mutations (i.e. things that are readily visible to the naked eye) like straw lid and hunchback and growth-point defects were happening at a high frequency then wouldn't you agree that I, having deflasked a large number of plants, would be in a better position to have encountered them? Especially when compared to someone who has never done any actual deflasking? That is how I see it as relevant.

x2. Out of all the TC neps there are, there are comparatively few with problems.

Thank you. That was what I was driving at with this whole thread. The problem is not the fact that there are those plants with problems but that the ones with the problems are being multiplied and distributed at high numbers. And that gives the wrong impression that rate at which problems develop is abnormally high.

Sure. Multiple people who very frequently see neps in the wild (and one more I'd rather not name). Talk to Robert, Longor, Suska, etc. When you see neps in the wild as much as they do "i.e. have them growing wild behind your house even....), I wouldn't just call that anecdotal. Sure, it's not published in a journal, but it's definitely good enough. With the exception of eusocial insects and a certain kind of mite (only 2 examples I can think of), most species of plants and animals stay as close as possible to a 1:1 ratio. With the 2 exceptions, almost everything is between 5:1 and 1:1. Again, no journal or anything, but its more like basic observation. Everyone knows that, but you don't need something to prove it once you've seen it enough.
I've flowered 8 or 9 things - all male. 90% of my collection is unknown gender, but out of 80somethingish neps, I've got 3 known females. And trust me, I try my hardest to get females when they are available.

Okay. I would still call that anecdotal but that is more likely my training. Basic observation, even though it is very well supported as this is, still falls in the anecdotal constraint to me. Still very interesting information and worth further research on IMHO.

Why aren't they selling them on a large scale? They'd probably make pretty good profits....the community as a whole (at least the more important growers) are totally unsatisfied with the one clone of a species that is circulating.

Given the nature of their organization they are not able to do sales in the manner you are thinking. I distribute what I can when I can but I myself an not really geared up for large scale throughput

On the 2 posts above me....
I do agree. The people that have the clones with these aberrations are very vocal about it, as I think they should be. Some of these defects are TOTALLY unacceptable, yet these plants are still being sold. I realize labs put a lot of time and effort in, but instead of getting angry and defensive when people are unhappy with inferior product, they should fix it by replacing it with a "normal" clone. Agreed on corruption of communication, or misunderstanding on the part of the "masses". There aren't a whole hell of a lot of people I'd consider in the upper echelon of the nep community, and I mean growers and just "minds" so to speak. Maybe about 1%. Hell I'm not even that good of a grower, though I have a ton of nep knowledge. Anyway, that leaves 99% of the community that doesn't understand these types of issues as well, if really at all. However when they see frequent public discussions about this, etc...well it's like playing telephone if you get my drift.

I catch your drift perfectly, that was what I was looking for in the first place, the reason that TC as a "mutant mill" had become the standard method of thinking. I appreciate your contributions to the conversation and helping to elucidate the answer.
 
  • #55
Now in hawaii there are lots of seed grown neps
now the USA well the continental US there are not many seed grown neps I mean there are but not that many compared to whats in hawaii.

Oh yes there certainly are. There may very well be FAR more seed grown neps here in the continental US than in Hawaii. Remember what Ron said previously...there are lots of secret growers who do not participate in any of the forums (many who I know personally). Between them, myself, Sunbelle, and several well known current and former members..we are growing neps from seed numbering in the thousands.

Sorry Pyro if this had nothing to do with your topic. I just needed to set the record straight.
 
  • #56
Hey Philcula,

Hijack away, I don't mind :)

Heck, based on what you put in the mail for me I give you carte blanch...
 
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