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My N. miranda is about to flower

I just noticed a budding flower spike on it today.

I'll post pics later.
 
It's a pity ,from my experience, all 30 Mirandas I grow are male and infertile. Who knows why?
Miranda44.jpg
 
All Mirandas are always male and infertile. Genetics dealt them a bad hand haha
 
So far, there would seem to be two distinct possibilities as to why N. 'Miranda' is sterile.
It would appear the sterility could be caused by the hormones use as part of the tc process or used to boost plant growth to get them to market size. I do know of one grower who has succeeded with germinating a hybrid using N. 'Miranda'. The germination rate was extremely low, and the seedlings have yet to reach any appreciable size (they germinated over the summer). Perhaps once our 'Miranda" plants have grown out for a while, they may recover some fertility???
The alternate possiblity is that N. Miranda is a triploid-a mule-or some other polyploid, and with the "genetically correct" other plant (female), and persistance, we get a match up and viable seed.
Anyone know of any studies on ploidy in Nepenthes?
 
even thought 'Miranda' is a cultivar...could you just redo the cross and get a very similar offspring?
Alex
 
The exact parentage is proprietary information. Because it is so similar to N. Mixta 'Superba', it may be a select clone from the hybrid of (N. maxima x N. Mixta 'Superba'). When N. 'Miranda' was first put on the market, it was sold as N. maxima, and it is obviously a hybrid. Personally, I see quite a bit of the northiana influence, and would not eliminate the possibility of it being a remake of N. Mixta (maxima x northiana).
The hybrid could be remade and results would be close enough, if only we really knew the parentage???
 
i thought it was Mixta x Maxima....or reverse. arent those parents though? somewhere i heard that.
Alex
 
Maxima x Mixta is the most likely guess. The maxima would be the female, and thus listed first in the hybrid.
 
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