KAT,
There's a big difference between hybrids and cultivars.
Cultivars are specific individual plants (that may be species or hybrids). "Cultivar" stands for "cultivated variety".
For CPs, in order to get a another individual plant that is also that cultivar, you usually need to take a cutting.
That's not the case for all plants: in many crop plants, cultivars breed true—think of different types of tomatoes or peppers.
Here you can think of cultivars as of breeds in dogs or cats. Cats all the same species (
Felis catus), but you must make sure to breed a Siamese with a Siamese in order to get another Siamese.
If you grow peppers, you have to cross a Jalapeño with a Jalapeño (or self it) in order to get seeds that will grow into Jalapeño plants again. (And there are many, many other cultivars of this species,
Capsicum annuum.)
For CP cultivars, like all the different types of VFT, you need to take cuttings to get another individual that has the same traits as original cultivar. That is, they don't breed true. What you need is a clone, a plant that is propagated vegetatively, nor sexually.
So, all
Dionaea cv. 'Cupped Trap', for instance, come from the very same plant, the very first plant of that cultivar. They are all grown from cuttings or divisions or off-shoots that go back to one single plant.
If you grow plants from seeds of a VFT cultivar, who knows what will come out. Most likely, a pretty regular looking VFT.
Hybrids, on the other hand, are crosses between species (or perhaps between plants that already are hybrids, as happens in
Sarracenia).
For example, any cross between
D. intermedia and
D. filiformis is called
Drosera x
hybrida. This is a scientific characterization, just like species. You cannot get
D. filiformis back from
Drosera x
hybrida, the genes are forever mingled between the species. There is also no guarantee that all
Drosera x
hybrida look alike or that all off-spring of a specific
Drosera x
hybrida plant will look just like the parent. But that's not the point here: the point is scientific classification. Just like different plants of the same
species can look different, two plants that are the same hybrid can look differently.
You can think here of ligers (the hybrid offspring of a male lion and female tiger). If you have a liger that can breed, the cubs will always be ligers, never lions or tigers. (Ligers are usually, though not always, sterile—but never mind that. It's just an example.)
Second generation ligers won't look exactly like the mother (or father, for that matter), just like lion cubs don't look exactly like their parents.
Here's an interesting article on
Drosera hybrids by John Brittnacher:
International Carnivorous Plant Society - Drosera hybrids
So, "hybrid" and "cultivar" are categorizations that serve two very different purposes.
Hope this helps.
Best,
Marcus
