Cultivars

Cultivars are the result of human mediated selection, breading and propagation of plants possessing certain desired characters. Such traits may spontaneously arise in cultivation or can be the product of intentional breeding through successive selective crosses.

Any character that triggers our imagination can, in theory, be genetically tampered, improved or modified. Most often, cultivators will select for flower color, epidermal markings, body pigmentation, spine morphology, number or shape of ribs, growth habit or any other visible distinct morphological character.

Strictly speaking, cultivars (abbreviated as cv.) must be formally recognized, published and registered to the appropriate authority, in order to obtain official cv. status – a cumbersome process that not everyone follows. Thus a number of interesting cultivars exist in cultivation without formal recognition. Proper cultivars are named with the species name followed by cv. and their given cultivar name in single quote marks, eg. Lithops optica cv. ‘Rubra’ or Astrophytum myriostigma cv. ‘Onzuka’. In order to distinguish them, the names of cultivars without formal recognition that we offer are contained in double quote marks, eg. Lithops dorotheae cv. “Zorro Zap”, which is an improvement of cv. ‘Zorro’.

In addition to cultivars, in this category we offer a number of other human-made or -selected items, such as intraspecific and intrageneric hybrids, crested, monstrose and caespitose (multiheaded) forms, epidermal (f. variegata) or floral pigmentation variants and other forms and varieties that do not represent natural populations.

Also in this category we include breads and crossings that are not representative of a taxon or the general population of a colony, but rather involve 2-3 select plants beyond the norm with unique morphology or exceptional characters, for example extra long or thick spines or wide large tubercles. These are denoted as Select (S) crosses in the description and in some cases they may represent the initial stages in process of  creating a cultivar.

We use the standard symbols utilized in genetics and plant breeding to describe the genetic purity and breeding stage of the cultivars we offer. Authentic plants obtained from original sources (eg. Japan or Thailand) are designated as Parent (P) plants. Seed produced on P plants is called Filial 1 (F1) and so are the plants produced from F1 seed. Seed produced on F1 plants is designated as F2 and so on. F1 seed is usually limited and given proper pollination techniques, it is of equal purity with the original cultivars.

On the other hand, concerning novel cultivars produced either from scratch (eg. Lithops schwantesii cv. ‘Purplre Haze’ or Ariocarpus confusus cv. ‘Arcano’) or from existing cultivars affording improvement or taken to a different morphologic direction (Lithops schwantesii cv. “Nutwerk Coral” or Ariocarpus retusus cv. ‘Iraklis’), the F number indicates the number of selective crosses that was needed to achieve the desired phenotype. The higher the F number (F3, F4, etc), the more intense the selected traits that characterize the cultivar. Some cultivars can be stabilized very quickly, while others may require several generations of selective breeding. When relevant, information regarding F status will be given in the description of seeds or plants.