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Male/ female nepenthes

Hi,

Is there a certain standard ratio for what sex seedlings will end up as in this genus, or does it vary species to species?
I was under the impression at one point females were more rare than males, but some have told me its 50/50.
Not the most exciting topic, but in case I want to plan for seed of something.

Regards,

Joe
 
According to "The Savage Garden", about 70% are male, and only 30% are female.
 
I think your chances of obtaining males and females of the same species (for species true breeding) are better if you obtain duplicate plants from seperate sources. One plant from supplier X one plant from supplier Y one plant from supplier Z making sure the suppliers don't all buy from the same TC laboratory. Because if the plants at one supplier are all from one invitro flask (the "fastest", most common way that neps are commercially propagated) they will all be whatever sex the parent mericlone clump in the flask is since they are simply clones. Unfortunately No supplier I know sells sexed TC clones, I'd sure like to find a place that did!
Or another method would be to buy a batch of 10 seed grown seedings
However you go about it, it's a long ways off before they flower and you can ID their sex. You may end up growing all one sex no matter what you try to ensure sexual diversity in your collection! It's quite unfortunate as there's some hybrids I'd like to try myself (as well as species true breeding), knowing my luck I'll end up with either all boys or all girls!  
wink.gif


Good luck!
 
Hmm interesting question. I think purely from a hypothetical view that a large enough population of plants raised from seed should give a 50/50 ratio male/female. Usually to be fairly certain of getting one male and one female, plan on 4 seedlings minimum

Now if your talking about plants from tissue culture or from cuttings that is another story. For example the great majority of N. khasiana available are female. Simply because of the few plants that made it into cultivation they turned out to be female. So the population sample was relatively small to start with and the apparent ratio is skewed drastically.
Tony
 
wow it all sounds just like my stats classes and blahblah~
=]
 
Statistics it is! Maybe you would like to do the calculations.. my statistics is very rusty ;<

Odds of getting 4 females if you have 4 plants and the odds of each plant is 50% for turning out female.

Off the top of my head its .5 x .5 x .5 x .5 = .0625 or 6.25%

(odds of getting 4 males would be the same so no reason to calculate it.)

So with 4 plants the odds of getting either 4 males or 4 females is 12.5%
Tony
 
wow add it up to make it 100%. thats alot of plants. to bad the TC lab couldn't just lable them as sex,clone,& ect. it would be alot cheaper
 
AH the problem is that most sterile cultures are started from seed... So the lab has no idea what sex they are until the first batch of plants reaches maturity.

There are cases where you can buy certain sex clones. Mostly you will see this for plants which have been in cultivation for a while like N. alata, N. ventricosa, N. maxima etc. Many of the Nepenthes species have not been in cultivation long enough yet to have mature plants out there for sex identification. I am sure over time you will see more of this information appearing on retail pricelists. Whenever I have a plant of unknown sex flower for the first time I make a note and update my growlist. Eventually I hope to have multiple clones of each sex for each species available at least on a limited basis.

Tony
 
  • #10
that is understanable know.

yes i do agree w/ u on haveing 2 plants of each species that would make it more on your part that u wouldn't need the TC labs to get plants u could just grow your own from seed. then if you ever did have to get a plant in a rush. there is always the labs.

yes i do also have a couple of plants that are mature enought 2 know the sex of them.
 
  • #11
Say Tony,
I've been wondering, if you have a plant which is mature and has flowered and you take a growing point cutting from that plant, how long will it take that cutting to mature and flower?
I assume being taken from a mature plant it will grow and mature somewhat faster but is there an average time frame (say growing for 2 years undisturbed/uncut) that it takes a cutting to settle in and reach flowering stage? Must a cutting attain a certain size before they will flower?
In my current lowland setup I have to prune each time the plants get to 24-30" tall and restart them so I will never get flowers this way. I was just curious if there's a certain minimum size I should build my next enclosure so I can get at least a few of my behemoths to flower! I'm thinking 6 ft long 6 foot high and 4 feet deep but would even that be large enough to get the easies of them to flower or would their enclosure need to be even bigger yet?
 
  • #12
sword, i have 2 plants that have flowered and both of them have been at least 4 foot long before they put out a flower spike. one i bought with the spike on it and the other took pretty long to grow before it but one out.
 
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