'Pitcher leaves' in Pinguicula

Juerg Steiger (steiger@iae.unibe.ch)
Wed, 6 Dec 1995 08:55:14 +0000

Andrew Marshall writes, responding to Jos Franken:

>I also have noted this phenomena in tissue cultured P. moranensis and in
>the tissue cultured P. agnata x gypsicola.
>What I did note though is that this curiosity did not remain for long on
>the plant. It seemed that a couple of weeks after noting the strange
>leaf that I was unable to find it.

>btw Jos, was your P. moranensis from seed or tissue cultured? Has any one
>else seen this occur and was it form seed or tissue culture?

My pitcher shaped leaves of Ping. grandiflora, vulgaris and longifolia had
the same 'life expectancy'
as normal leaves (i.e. several months). All plants were seed cultured. I
guess this malformation phenomenon happens from time to time also in wild
plants, but obviously the combination of the Pinguicula-type digestive
glands in the inside of a pitcher-shaped leave proved to offer no
advantage during evolution.

Juerg

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Dr. Juerg Steiger, Institut fuer Aus-, Weiter- und Fortbildung IAWF
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