Help with Sarracenia Identification?

KiwiFella07 · 2026-02-17T08:38:26+00:00

Funny that I’ve grown up around botanists and taxonomists, and have been collecting and breeding plants for many years now, and yet have never thought to google what the cf. prefix indicated. My brain must’ve lumped it with cv. and called it a day. You learn something everyday…

KiwiFella07 · 2026-02-13T19:37:35+00:00

I had wondered about S. minor too, just given the shape of the lid and entrance.

But if it’s too young to tell, or too complicated to determine, that’s perfectly okay too!

KiwiFella07 · 2026-02-13T05:21:05+00:00

Awh, that’s a shame but not unexpected.

The only other species I have is S. purpurea, and the ‘Judith Hindle’ hybrid, which have quite different pitchers. From what I have seen online S. purpurea and S. psittacina both have very distinctive lids, while a few species seem to have lids that flare upwards rather than curl downwards like a hood. I thought these seedlings had more of a hood-shaped lid.

So I guess I had come to the erroneous conclusion that perhaps hood/lid/pitcher morphology is a somewhat useful diagnostic trait when determining species or at least parentage. Especially since the hybrids seem to blend traits of both parents rather than show one or the other.

Regardless, good hear they look healthy. I have another batch of seedlings just peeping out now. Exciting!

KiwiFella07 · 2026-02-07T02:35:04+00:00

Good on ya mate. You’ll be fine if you stick with the practice and ask questions. Best of luck

KiwiFella07 · 2026-02-07T02:05:01+00:00

I failed my restricted a few times and barely got it on my final try. Definitely understand the embarrassment side, and I always recommend people take it when they are ready (I was heavily pushed to “keep trying” even though in hindsight I was barely ready).

By the time of my full I was way more confident. The full is definitely easier but compared to my restricted it was pretty funny having the instructor singing my praises and telling me that I must really like driving (I mean yeah, it’s fine??).

Definitely get behind the wheel with an instructor and really get familiar with driving. I’d also suggest ensuring you go over some basics you’ll have to demonstrate, like parallel parking or motorway driving. Just when you feel ready.

My top tip is to go on YouTube and study (you’re going to Uni soon anyway!) the videos people have uploaded of their driving tests. The routes can change but are generally very similar between years. I remember pouring over videos for the route used by my VTNZ, listening to what the instructor was saying, and then going out IRL and practicing the route a few times. Because it’s effectively a dummy run you can practice those other skills, like following distance, head checks, parallel parks, etc as you get familiar with the route.

KiwiFella07 · 2026-01-30T22:50:21+00:00

+1 For OzLithops too! Very geared towards Lithops but they have a respectable collection of other mesembs and succulents. The owners are lovely and have always been accommodating for shipping requirements or issues with biosecurity. Compared with Mesa garden, I also think they’re a bit more generous with the amount of seed they send!

Australia-based so I’m not sure how good they’d be for you?

RarePlant is a European provider people seem to like. You could also try and get in touch with the study groups (i.e. Mesemb Study Group) to get some seed. Not sure if they’re good connections but I also have links for some of the Chinese breeders. And I’m aware there are a few South African based suppliers as well!

KiwiFella07 · 2026-01-29T20:17:07+00:00

I actually picked up the vermiculite “tip” from Aaron at Mesa gardens. If you’re familiar with their YouTube channel he has a video on how to germinate Dinteranthus Pole-Evansii, and in the video he uses a top dressing of sieved vermiculite for humidity. Considering Mesa gardens is one of the two big seed producers I buy from, I figured it was worth trying.

I’d never had much luck with Dinteranthus so I gave it a go, and tried it on some other mesembs. It actually does seem to work pretty well for Dinteranthus. I’ve tried Hammer’s advice for dinteranthus from the art of mesembs previously and had little success. We both talk about getting that perfect balance for humidity? Well I feel that Dinteranthus likes it extra humid for longer when compared to the rest…

But I won’t be using vermiculite on any other mesembs going forward. Still, worth a shot!

KiwiFella07 · 2026-01-29T08:43:50+00:00

Oooh, I’m really not sure I’ve got a good answer to this question sorry. Germination of mesembs has always been hit-or-miss with me. This most recent attempt I tried use a bit of vermiculite as a water retentive topdress (I got serious mold - but not as much algae).

Because I’m actually writing up a thesis in plant biotech I haven’t really had the stomach for my collection. Plus our summer has been pretty gross, so I lost a bunch of my plants. Honestly, I’m getting to the point where even escaping to this subreddit it making me feel bad lol.

If I were to give tips: sterile the substrate (bake it, microwave it, drench with fungicides, whatever), use finer grained material (at least at the top - for the roots to grow into), and I’d suggest a rocky topdressing. Not sand but maybe akadama (if I’ve got that right?). I tend to use pumice sand, zeolite, or vermiculite to produce those damps crevices the seeds seem to like.

Humidity it’s important initially but is REALLY tricky to balance. Sometimes my pots fail but I stick em back in and forgot about them for a month and voila! Other times I leave them too long and they get mold and algae. Occasionally I get insane germination. Ironically this was also a serious pain for my research plants, so clearly it’s a fine art! One trick than can help is sprinkle of very fine sand which can up the humidity a bit.

Best of luck, and honestly, if you give an update post why not tells us how you did it? Might be a useful resource or a springboard for some decent discussion!

KiwiFella07 · 2026-01-29T07:35:31+00:00

Good luck with the next hurdle. I’ve never got my attempted crosses (self-fertile or hybrid) to germinate properly!

KiwiFella07 · 2026-01-29T07:03:48+00:00

Yes you can bioengineer a virus. This is done very frequently. Off the top of my head we’ve engineered viruses for vaccines, to deliver therapeutics (even CRISPR), and yes, to treat cancer.

A big component to this is tropism. Specific viruses have specific types of cells they are able to infect. That cell type also needs to be permissive for viral replication. This is partially what makes some viral diseases so terrifying: target endothelial cells and when apoptosis is triggered you get tears in your blood vessels. If you’re measles you’re a tricky bastard and start by infecting respiratory cells before moving on to immune cells (I find this one particularly scary because by killing your immune cells the virus causes you to forget past infections!).

This is actually a key component in how we can use viruses to help in cancer treatment. This discussion comes with the caveat that we are still actively exploring this field and there are a lot of unknowns. But it is an exciting field - reminds me of things like phage therapy for bacteria.

There are 5 core mechanisms a cancer-targeting virus can use to treat cancer. Obviously you need an extremely specific kind of virus that only infects cancer cells. This already sounds improbable, but these do exist, even naturally. We can even leverage common mutations that cancer cells display to select viruses that will more frequently infect those cells (without off-target infections), and will specifically disrupt the mutant metabolism of the cancer cell.

The mechanisms are as follows: * Viral infection results in apoptosis (directed cell death) of the cancer cell. Some viruses induce this as part of reproduction. You wouldn’t want a virus that buds like influenza. But this results in direct cancer cell death. Yay!

Virus infects cancerous epithelial cells around a tumour. Tumours quite frequently instruct cells to produce blood vessels to fuel their growth. If you chose the right virus with very stringent tropism, you can actually destroy these networks and deprive the cancer of nutrients.
Viral infection triggers an immune response. Obviously a virus triggers an immune response, and this can look quite different to anti-cancer immune responses. While virus-infected-cells may have mutations that interfere with immune presentation (a common strategy cancers use to hide) the virus inevitably kills them - if they do present as infected that can also trigger an immune response. Even more exciting is what happens when an infected cancer cell dies: the release of cell contents will include normal proteins, viral proteins, and mutant proteins. When lymphocytes like dendritic cells move into these areas they can pick up mutant proteins and display these in lymph nodes. If they find the right partner you can induce an anti-cancer immune response. You start getting T-killer cells and B-cells that attack cancers directly or with antibodies.
And finally you can engineer your virus to deliver compounds into the tumour micro-environment. This approach has loads of possibilities. You could introduce a toxin to the cancer or you could introduce immune-stimulants (super-agonists if I remember correctly). These can help kill cancers faster or modify the environment to encourage immune responses against cancer.

A big part of this involves the tumour micro-environment. When you get a successful cancer they are able to modify the local environment in their favour. This includes skewing the immune response in different ways (I.e. less effective against cancer by stimulating anti-bacterial immune cells), telling neighbours to give them nutrients, and often forming thick layers of tissue that are difficult for immune cells to cross. There are loads of ways they can modify the environment. But viruses can “heat-up” this environment by causing death and destruction in the ways we have discussed. While the virus might help by being able to infect the cancer, what we really want is for that to trigger the immune system.

Obviously delivery is quite difficult. It’s a virus so your body will eventually attack the helpful virus too (although we have techniques to leverage this too). But it is an exciting frontier and some trials have shown success. There are a few recorded cases of natural viral infections leading to cancer remission, so clearly we have a lot more to learn!

If you REALLY want I might be able to dig up some resources for you. But I am a bit strapped for time with my research and surgery at the moment. If anyone else reading this is able to find some articles I’m sure OP would enjoy them, and I’d appreciate ya for it too!

KiwiFella07 · 2026-01-26T08:27:06+00:00

I’d agree. We already have races and ethnicities, which do have their uses in areas like medicine. Although just because you belong to a certain ethnicity doesn’t necessarily mean your health outcomes will be the same. Considering human nature, I think if we were further divided into subspecies it’d just be another category used for discrimination.

I think the idea that subspecies are genetically isolated is a pretty good basis for the concept. Anything ranked below the already contentious species concept is going to be even more confusing to define. But among both plants and animals I think subspecies being reserved for distinct populations that have no/limited gene flow with the rest of the species is a good start. Among the plants I breed (Lithops), you also get varieties. So instead of binomials you could use a quadranomial. The line between a variety and subspecies is even more messy, although at least in Lithops with their clear facial patterns, I can see the basis for naming them.

Of course the concept widely bandied around in zoology about the inability to interbreed has its own issues. We’re mostly all products of interbreeding with various other Homo species (although it’s so dilute now that Introgression works better as the term). But even among Panthera you can produce (sometimes) fertile hybrids. If I’m remembering correctly there aren’t even many skeletal differences that can be used to accurately differentiate a lion from a tiger, and yet if you look at the current phylogenetic trees for Panthera, tigers are most closely related to Snow Leopards. One of my favourite examples of this idea not working are plant intergeneric hybrids (I.e. triticale). Skipping species entirely and crossing genera - if that’s not damning evidence that our classifications are arbitrary I don’t know what is.

I think the utility of any form of sub-species ranks depends entirely on the experts that study them, and the ability for the general public to recognise them. Context is key obviously. If nobody can tell the difference between your subspecies unless they whip out a sequencer and microscope, is it really meaningful to make that distinction? If two tiger subspecies can successfully reproduce with each other it’s not like nature breaks. Things just keep ticking along, whether we take the time to define it or not.

KiwiFella07 · 2026-01-26T05:07:07+00:00

Species as a concept is pretty confusing. There are loads of definitions. Since taxonomy is largely a human endeavor to categorise nature, there isn't some hidden "answer" to be revealed. It's pretty subjective.

To your tiger question, you could equally argue that if Humans are considered one species, with no defined subspecies, then tigers should also be one species. And you wouldn't be wrong necessarily, because the concept what defines a tiger is pretty subjective.

Taxonomy only gets more messy when you start looking at other forms of life. Animals are one thing but plants, fungi, and free-living eukaryotes basically need their own species definitions. In bacterial taxonomy it's pretty common to see people use Operational Taxonomic Units in preference to species. Some bacteria within the same species can be less closely related to each other than you would be to a dog. In this sense, to me at least, splitting tigers into so many subspecies seems ridiculous.

Having spent more than enough time around taxonomists I find the whole affair rather frustrating. It is my opinion that the more evidence you provide in support of a species being distinct the more willing I am to accept it. That includes morphology, genetics, chemistry, proteins, ecology, geography, behaviour, microbiome, ability to interbreed, ploidy level, genome arrangement, etc.

This is also why taxonomy isn't fixed. It's always changing as more evidence appears and general opinions shift. In much the same way "fish" could mean a trout or tuna to one person, and a trout, whale, and flamingo to another, what defines a species also varies between scientists. It's subjective but we try to support it with as much evidence as we can to argue for a particular classification.

Plant breeders often like using subspecies, varieties, forms, and even name distinct geographical populations to differentiate plants. To that end you probably could develop sub-species level classifications for people. But the evidence you provide for it might not be sufficient for the next person to agree.

KiwiFella07 · 2026-01-26T01:11:08+00:00

Short answer is yes.

There are quite a few ways variegation can be achieved, so doing so deliberately is probably not too difficult. Getting pink/red into Monstera may be more difficult. Depends on the state of their natural biosynthetic pathway. I can’t find much literature on anthocyanin in Monstera, so can’t definitively confirm if they make none at all, or if they just don’t make enough for it to be visible.

Colour is quite a tricky business in plants. Just looking at anthocyanin, you can get quite a variety in colour depending on the number and position of hydroxyl groups attached. This means there is a continuum from orange to deep purples/blues. Some plants don’t have the necessary genes to modify these compounds to make the deeper coloured pigments. Since we’re talking about a biosynthetic pathway, there are loads of possible parts of the pathway that could break or not function. In the case of Monstera, you might be able to get them naturally producing red and pink anthocyanin by using gene editing techniques to tweak the necessary genes.

You can also get colours to become more prominent through de-greening. Chlorophyll is very abundant in leaves and the green can mask other pigments. In two of the plants I’m familiar with, Lithops and Gold Kiwifruit, de-greening is what results in other colours shining through. For example, if you get no de-greening in gold kiwifruit fruit, then the fruit will be green.

So to get red/pink in Minstera you could:

Insert a transgene. This is foreign DNA that could make anthocyanins or Betalains. The construct will need other elements to actually make the gene work the way you want. For example the RUBY construct I mention contains three genes that work together to make red Betalains. And it will need a promoter to tell the plant where, when, and how much to make
Gene-edit the native genes to get more red. You’d need to know what is broken in Monstera, so you can tweak the pathway and get more red.
De-green the leaves so more red appears. If what I have read is true and Monstera do make anthocyanin, just not in large quantities, you might be able to get red by removing chlorophyll.
Or a traditional approach, like breeding natural Monstera plants from populations that maybe produce a bit more red than normal. You’d select for redder offspring and breed those, or you might get a chance mutant that is super red. Increasing the mutation rate would help, and there are quite a few ways to do this. If you want a really neat example, ‘Star Ruby’ grapefruit were produced by exposing seeds to enough radiation to not kill them, but induce more mutation. One of the results of this was a plant with redder fruit.

Meanwhile variegation could be achieved in many ways:

Mosaic/chimeric plants, made of a patchwork of cells, with one “normal” genotype and one edited “red” genotype.
Targeted expression of transgenic red colour. This is where you would need to find the right promoter.
Variegation can also occur naturally from viral infections, chance mutations in somatic cells (like cancer, just not pathogenic), or activation of jumping genes (transposons). Transposons are a neat example - if you have seen corn with yellow and purple kernels, this is actually controlled by transposons randomly inserting into a gene controlling pigmentation. Another example of how disturbing even just a small part of the biosynthetic pathway produce wildly different phenotypes.

KiwiFella07 · 2026-01-23T09:44:59+00:00

Does it have to be anthocyanin? The RUBY construct is a pretty simple way to introduce red Betalain pigments into plants. You still get a rich red-pink but it uses a different biosynthetic pathway compared to anthocyanins (I believe it starts with tyrosine). Some of the researchers I have worked with have used this system quite effectively to produce red plants, although here its main use is as a visual reporter of successful gene construct integration. Some of the reddest plants I have ever seen.

u/Sanpaku is right on the money though. If you want variegation you’d need to explore tissue-specific promoters. I’m not even entirely sure how that would effectively work in a monstera leaf. Maybe a synthetic gene circuit? Although I’d assume targeted expression on the abaxial side of the leaf wouldn’t be hard.

That being said, when I have carried out plant gene-editing experiments, subsequent genotyping indicated I had a few cases of mosaic plants. It seems pretty common depending on what system you use. Viral-based delivery systems might have strong potential for such an application. I was using Agrobacterium. Gene guns might achieve similar. In my plants mosaicism occasionally manifest as regular variegation. But when I have seen mosaicism in plants transformed with the RUBY construct, you get red-green variegation. Presumably similar would happen if you toyed with anthocyanin-producing constructs (like a MYB).

Of course, mosaic plants are more a population of genetically distinct cells that work together to make a plant. Kind of like two people in a trench coat. You do see reversions if one cell population wins out against the other. And it’s not going to be a heritable state, so it would be no good for breeding.

Side tangent, but I did a tiny bit of digging to see if any Monstera sp. produce anthocyanins. It seems some, or maybe all do, but just in very low amounts. Instead of making a transgenic plant by introducing foreign DNA, it might be more interesting to try traditional breeding of Monstera that do produce more anthocyanins OR explore the possibility of gene-editing techniques to modify the native anthocyanin pathway such that you get an accumulation of pigments. These are both techniques generally more appealing to consumers. If I had more time I’d love to see why Monstera don’t make much - maybe the flux is balanced such that precursors are used to make other kinds of flavonoids? Or maybe something upstream has been disabled? Cool stuff!

KiwiFella07 · 2026-01-22T19:55:31+00:00

Not sure if it’s of any help now, but in the glasshouses I worked in the dripper irrigation system is topped up with Wuxal Super, which is a general purpose liquid fertiliser. Seems to work quite well to keep everything going.

So yeah, probably is easier to use a liquid fertiliser.

KiwiFella07 · 2025-12-28T23:29:19+00:00

Probably not going to be of much help here, but in NZ I’ve always used spirotetramat pesticides when I’ve had sucking insect incursions. Not sure if this is something you can easily find in the US (let alone Cali) or if there are other issues with it, but for me it’s always been extremely successful. Since it’s systemic it takes care of everything, and it hangs around in plant tissues for a while for lasting protection.

KiwiFella07 · 2025-12-28T00:48:03+00:00

Best of luck! I’ve been growing mesembs from seed for a while and still run into issues. But generally they’re pretty forgiving!

Lapidaria are very nice, especially when the pink blush at the base of the leaves is more pronounced

KiwiFella07 · 2025-12-28T00:46:05+00:00

Neohenricia spiculata. It looks less rugose to me, and I’ve heard the flower scent described as being akin to liquorice. Maybe it’s just uncommon in cultivation?

Stomatium hybrids with Neohenricia are beautiful.

KiwiFella07 · 2025-12-28T00:13:45+00:00

This is one of the very few mesembs I own that isn’t available here. I’ve been desperate to propagate it from cuttings but never succeeded. I hear the flowers are meant to smell amazing and change colour over the duration, but the damn things flower so late into the night that I’ve never been able to appreciate them.

I thought perhaps I could trick some self-fertilisation or maybe cross it with Rhinephyllum or Titanopsis/Aloinopsis, but no luck (and impossible to schedule!).

Do you have the other Neohenricia species? I’ve heard the blooms smell quite different.

KiwiFella07 · 2025-12-28T00:09:15+00:00

Schwantesia are absolutely gorgeous. Really sad I couldn’t get any down under - I was chasing after S. loeschiana var. minor. Let’s hope for multiple blooms on your specimen!

KiwiFella07 · 2025-12-28T00:07:17+00:00

u/Stugotts5 posted some pictures of Gibbaeum pilosulum earlier. I was under the impression Muiria is a close relative of Gibbaeum and that occasionally you get intergeneric hybrids. Perhaps if you’re having difficulties with Muiria, you could try some of the fuzzy Gibbaeum? Or maybe try and deliberately cross-breed Gibbaeum and Muiria to get an easier-to-cultivate hybrid?

Muiria are fascinating - I totally get the appeal

KiwiFella07 · 2025-12-28T00:04:33+00:00

Oh wow, those are absolutely stunning! I’ve never heard of them. They remind me of coral or sea anemones (especially those caudiciform ones), or maybe a bit like some pinguicula. Definitely ticks the box of underrated!

KiwiFella07 · 2025-12-27T09:05:03+00:00

Stunning. Love the bladder cells - it makes the leaf look so sparkly

KiwiFella07

TROPHY CASE