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.