Plant Cultivators

Taxonomy is the classification organisms. In biology there are 8 levels of hierarchy domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Plants are in kingdom Plantae. When you see a plant label it will have a genus then a species name after that many of them will have a cultivar or variety name. The first letter of a cultivar is capitalized and the term is never italicized. Cultivars are also surrounded by single quotation marks or preceded by the abbreviation “cv”. Example ‘ Forest Pansy ‘. Cultivars are types of plants that been cultivated and bred by humans. Cultivars are created when people take species of plants and breed them for specific traits. It can be for color, disease resistance, taste, growth habit, hardiness or other desirable traits. The difference between varieties and cultivars is that varieties produce seeds that develop into replicas of the parent plant. Cultivars may or may not produce seeds. Many times cultivars will have cultivar name and it may be trademarked TM or registered R these are indicators that the plant is a hybrid or cultivar. One drawback of a cultivar is the lack of genetic diversity. Cultivars loss of genetic diversity may cause the plant not to be able to adapt to local environmental conditions. A species plant sold in a nursery might still be clonally grown but just not from a named cultivar. Truly ‘wild type’ plants grown from seed, insuring genetic variation among individual plants are called a ‘straight species’. The advantage to cultivars is they will have specific superior traits larger fruits or nuts, larger are different color flowers, disease resistance or other desirable traits. Generally all the plants we grow for fruit, vegetables, nuts, are cultivars. Generally in the nursery all the plants are clonally grown by asexual reproduction cuttings, tissue culture from the parent plant. However almost all of the trees we sell are straight species grown from seed. Trees typically don’t have proper form if grown from cuttings. The thing I notice most is the consistency of our native plant clones makes them much more uniform. The native plant palate that we have today because of these superior plants by cloning makes them more desirable in the plant market. For instance the Blackfoot Daisies we sell today are much hardier and of more consistent quality than those we started out with. The plant world is always moving forward and changing be ready.