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Malesiana inermis

S

SydneyNeps

Last year I bought a batch of inermis from Malesiana. There appear to be a number of clones, because there is a fair bit of variability in pitcher colour. Some are pure green, some have a tiny hint of red, and some are flushed with red. One has gone a deep burgundy, and is definitely not pure inermis given its colour and pitcher shape.

Does anyone else have a Malesiana inermis which has proved to be a hybrid, and worked out what the cross is? At this stage, this plant is too small to really tell, and it doesn't match any of the species that Charles Clarke says inermis hybridises with in the wild.

Hamish
 
I just got a batch but didn't see anything unusual. Can you post a picture? Maybe they are pulling them from the group now as I didn't see anything like you describe. Have you checked their site to see if they are now offering an N. inermis hybrids?
Tony
 
Tony,

I got mine ex vitro, so it wasn't visible for the first year.  It has only been in the last few months that it has started to throw out large purple pitchers. I'll get a pic and post it when I can.

Hamish
 
Perhaps its a purple inermis?(post from an ignorant person on this species)
 
No, inermis should be pure green. Also the pitcher shape is not quite right. What has probably happened (which would not be the first time) is that the tissue culture material is from wild-collected seed. The big problem with growing seed collected in the wild is you're never quite sure what you have until it is fairly mature, as you can't be sure it was the same species which pollinated the seed capsule. Indeed, some of the seed may be pure species, and some may be hybrid. Which is how burbidgeae x edwardsiana come onto the market - it was collected from burbidgeae for burbidgeae culture, but turned out to be hybrid material.
 
Hi all:

I would not call the pitchers pure green, but yellowish green. I do believe it has more yelllow than green though.

Gus
 
I would call lower pitchers pure green. Uppers can have a yellowish hue, but yellow in plants is a bit of a faded green. I was just comparing to the red/purple colour, which according to Charles, is never seen in plants in the wild. He says inermis lower pitchers are always pure green in the wild and he has never seen any red on them, which made him doubt the purity of the clones with red.
 
Perhaps a distant hybrid was in this clones past?
 
That's what I'm thinking, that the plants may be 1/4 or so another species, the pollen parent having been an "inermis x
confused.gif
". The features aren't distinct enough to identify the other species, but certainly the colouring, and to some extent the shape of one of the clones, is not 100% inermis. As the plants hit maturity, they may show clearer clues about their parentage.

I was just hoping that, given the fact that these are tissue cultures plants, there is bound to be other people out there with exactly the same clone which is more mature and showing clearer features...
 
  • #10
Let's break the confusion once and for all. the purple on your inermis is nothing more than the beautiful colour bongso gives when hybridizes with Inermis. In other words, some of your seedlings Hamish are Inermis crossed with bongso.  and it is not 1/4 but 1/2 bongso. The variation in colour is whitin the range expected when you get hybrids.

Ie, this is a very reliable source...if you have any doubts

Gus
 
  • #11
It *may* be bongso, but Charles has not listed bongso as a species with which inermis hybridises in the wild. As the plant is not mature, it is impossible to tell. The uppers should give a very good indication of whether it is a hybrid, and if so what and to what extent. There are other red species with which it could have hybridised if it is indeed a hybrid. If it were 1/2 bongso, then it would show much less reduced inermis traits and very pronounced bongso ones. As it is, the inermis features are the most obvious by far, the differing traits are overall fairly minor, but enough to give a sneaking suspicion that it is not pure species, certainly Charles has his doubts. To give a definite answer without seeing the plant is a bit didactive.

Anyway, once it is bigger Charles will be able to give his expert opinion.

As for reliability of the supplier, we could argue that one, but it's a debate I'll have off-line as it's very political. As I can say with any TC material that is from wild-collected seed, the purity can never be reliable. All one is ever certain of is the female parentage. Most suppliers release TC material as soon as it is ready, they generally don't grow the full line of clones to flowering maturity before releasing them commercially. Ditto with a lot of the seed grown material of new species being released now - there might be a few surprises there, as there have been in the past.

So the waiting game continues.
 
  • #12
Hi Hamish:

Charles Clarke is amongst the most knowledgeable nepenthes person on this earth, but not the only one. There are others, and i hope you recognize that. If Charles Clarke did not find a hybrid with bongso, does not mean it does not exist....
Regarding traits in hybrids, who know what traits a sibling gets from the parent. If i am not mistaken, you have mentioned that yourself in the past. Sometimes we may get complex hybrids, so the identification gets more difficult.

Anyway there are plants bigger in size that have that purplish colour and i am sure one should be able to see the characteristics of both parents in these plants.

Gus
 
  • #13
Yes Gus, I do realise that, but it was Charles who laid eyes on this plant and cast doubts as to its purity, so I have relied on his expertise. He is also the only Nep academic I have any access to. Which is why I posted the message in the hope that Rob or Tony had ideas given their extensive experience and information access.

What I was originally seeking to do was to find out whether anyone else had had a clone with traits like this but which was fully matured. So far, nobody has piped up, so it's possible that the trait is only a juvenile thing that will grow out with upper pitchers. Personally, I'm hoping that it is in fact pure inermis, and that the coloration is simply an effect of very high lights levels, levels much higher than maybe seedlings would get in the wild.

I've got about 6 different clones, and most of them show some red, but it's mostly fairly unobtrusive. A little bit of coloration would not be unusual, because many plants in cultivation do things that are not seen, or are rare, in the wild due to differing factors like light. Only one plant has gone a deep red. Someone had told me that some of the inermis that had been bought from Malesiana a few years ago had turned out to be hybrids, but I have been unsuccessful in locating the source of the rumour, and accordingly I've treated it as such. And I have reconciled myself that some riddles cannot always be solved. Makes life more interesting.
 
  • #14
[b said:
Quote[/b] (SydneyNeps @ Oct. 01 2004,12:25)]It *may* be bongso, but Charles has not listed bongso as a species with which inermis hybridises in the wild.
Click to expand...
Hi,

Charles only listed hybrids which he found in nature. Hybrids not found in nature as big plants just might not be competitive in nature in the special ecological niche and so don't grow to a big size. In contrast in TC any seedling will germinate and grow to a decent size.

Andreas told me that he gets much more hybrid offspring from seeds in TC than hybrid plants can be found in nature, which can be very difficult to recognize in young plants. A ggod example is N. pilosa x veitchii which were sold as pure N. pilosa for many years.

Cheers Joachim
 
  • #15
Joachim,

Excellent point, thanks for raising it. I hadn't heard of the sort of thing that you note that Andreas has experienced, but it does make perfect sense.

BTW, when are you going to update your website??? I keep checking in on it every week in the hope that you'll have new pics of your plants, it's one of my favourite sites....

Hamish
 
  • #16
Hi Joachim:

Sure much of what you say it's true. TC seedlings don't grow in a competitive environment to get to be big plants, but that does not mean that a male inermis with a female bongso can not produce seed that is weak and of inferior quality unable compete with other naturally found hybrid seed!. If the seed is picked up  and put into TC, you'll get the those plants otherwise not found in nature. In this case, the allegedlly inermis X bongso.

Unless 2 independent nepenthes ecologists scan all the areas where inermis and or bongso grow in Sumatra and they all agree that those two species don't co-exist in the same habitat altogether, then we'll still have to keep our minds open. Interestingly both species are found in Sumatra Jambi and Sumatra barat (pages 112 and 145 of Nepenthes of sumatra and peninsular malaysia)


just my opinion, as usual

Gus
 
  • #17
Interesting points.  Jebb and Cheek in Flora Malesiana mention that N. inermis and bongso grow in proximity to each other.  This is the first batch of N. inermis I have grown from Malesiana so we will see what they look like in a couple months.  All my others have been from Wistuba.  While these are generally green they can get some red flush in the lower pitchers.  Doesn't sound like what your describing on the other plants though, Hamish.  Natural hybrids do seem to pop up in the lab fairly often.  Malesiana also keep many clones in culture when they can.  I have been told there are often a dozen or more different clones for many of their species.  So odds there might be a hybrid are even more likely.

Tony
 
  • #18
Interesting exchange.

My sole N. inermis is from Andreas Wistuba and the larger lowers are also beginning to show the red "flush" on the pitchers around the point of lid attachment that Tony Paroubek alludes to in the previous post. Otherwise they are dead ringers for the lowers illustrated in Clarke's Sumatra book - clearly there is some color variability in this sp., or perhaps the latent anthocyanins are expressed by exposure to brilliant sunlight (as in other "colored" Neps).

Brgds,
SJ
 
  • #19
One thing that I would point out, is on some matters, Charles Clarke would prefer the taxonomists to make the call.
Did anyone see the thread about the Nepenthes in Thailand? I sent that to charles to check out, and he thought Jan Schlauer would be a better choice to show them to. I actually sent them to Jan first anyway. Jan told me that the real N. thorelii was not grown by anyone that he knew of. The real one looks more like N. rafflesiana than anything else. these plant s have that look to them. Now whether these plants are a hybrid between mirabilis and rafflesiana or a different plant, I don't know. Jan was not convinced the plants were from the wild and not nursery grown.

Cheers,

Joe
 
  • #20
Now you've opened a can of worms Joe ... thorelii. I just bury my head in the sand on that one, it's way too hard for my puny mind. The situation is so messy from different plants from Indo-China being grown as thorelii, and probably little or no real information of where they were collection. Plus, as you mention, nursery grown stuff, which could be crosses of different variants and/or species. I note Marcello Catalano has boldly stepped into this area.

I would love for someone to sort it all out. Is Jan brave enough to take up the challenge??
 
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