Twenty or more years ago, I had a horticulture class at UC, where the professor yammered on about totipotency; pluropotentcy; and all manner of potencies, best reserved as clues in a
NY Times crossword puzzle, for all the meaning it held for us at the time. All of it preceded a lab experiment in micropropagation, where we blindly futzed arround with soya. A few of us succeeded without contaminating the lot. We managed to get material to callus and fill several vials. My lab partner and I were jazzed, to be one of just three pair, in a large class, who had managed to pull it off.
What was most memorable to me was the professor's comment that tissue culture -- perhaps even home TC at some point -- would soon be capable of putting forth even the rarest of plants into the hands of most anyone who cared to take a stab at its cultivation; that prices for rarities would eventually go down; that many species would likely remain in the wild as a result.
About that time, I was given a rooted cutting of what some were still occasionally calling
Nepenthes dentata. I had only the dimmest clue of how to grow it properly; but I cracked a book and pulled that off; and had it for ten years, before leaving the country.
In the midst of all of this sturm and drang over the fate of one little plant, take a look at this vial -- one of many; one of a handful of different clones. Would anyone care to guess the number of plants, multiplying away on a Jell-O shot of what once had been a cotton defoliant? If anyone were capable, I'd FEDEX the whole f**king lot to them, on my dime . . .
Nepenthes attenboroughii: "Clone V" 4 July