This year I got a reminder that we never exactly know what we’re going to get when we put a seed in the ground. As a professional horticulturist, I run into many people who share stories of collecting seeds from favorite plants they’ve grown in their gardens or just encountered in their daily journey through life. What so many people don’t realize and are often shocked to learn is that a plant’s seed may not end up producing a replica of that plant. Perhaps this comes from seeing so many plants in nurseries that are homogenous. Or maybe it comes from never learning the plant part of the birds & the bees stories. I haven’t figured out if there’s a common thread to that big surprise, but what I am realizing is that more & more people who are interested in gardening have little idea how plants reproduce (& are being produced by humans).

The short story is that plants have a sexual reproductive system that is aided by pollenators. A bee lands on a pollenating flower, picks up some pollen, moves to another flower & drops that pollen grain on the female reproductive part of the second flower. Male part meets female part. Seed is formed, often enclosed by a delicious piece of fruit. The fruit is eaten by (say) a bird. The seed is pooped miles away; a new plant emerges.  Okay, so let’s be honest, that’s an over-simplification, but it tells an honest tale.

The key to this sexual reproduction is that the male and female components that build this seed come from two different plants. Yes, the plants are more than likely the same kind of plant — a daisy will pollenate a daisy, for instance. But, each of those daisies comes from a different genetic make up. So, by pairing two different sets of daisy genes, the genes of the new seed are a combination resulting from the mixture of both parents’ heritages. Eventhough the seed is taken from the “mother” plant; the seed has two parents, and the resulting “child” plant may perform more like the father you’ve never seen.

So, how do nursery growers manage to get plants that look exactly like another plant? Plants can be propagated through vegetative means. This means that a cutting of some sort is taken from the parent plant and used to create a new plant altogether. However, because the cutting comes from only one parent, the genes of the child are clones of the parent.

Okay, so I admit these are all gross simplifications. I also acknowledge that there are plants, like ferns, that reproduce by spores. And then there’s grafting where one plant may actually be created from cuttings from many parents.  There’s surprise sports  that result in new cultivars, and so much more. But let’s not confuse things too much right now. Let’s get back to the point of sexually produced seeds…

When a client tells me, “I want to grow some lavender from my sister’s lavender farm. I have seeds from her plants.” I begin by encouraging them to go ahead and start the seeds. (And likely I need to look in my propagation manuals to see what, if any stratification is needed for lavender since I’ve never grown it from seed.) Still, I then have to provide the client with the explanation of how seeds are produced. If her sister grew fields & fields of the same lavender, odds are she’ll get something that looks like her sister’s lavender. But, if her sister grew fields & fields of many kinds of lavender, who knows what she’ll get. The crosses (actually in any uncontrolled field situation) are impossible to predict.

So why was I surprised when some of my vegetables didn’t come out as advertised? I purchased some of my summer vegetables as starts (meaning someone else selected the seeds & got the plants going); some I purchased as seeds. I’ve realized over the years that starts are often a roll of the dice. Most young tomatoes all look about the same. Same with squash.  This year, I bought my squash as starts. My green beans and cucumbers I purchased as seed. Boy, did I get some surprised in both cases!

The squash starts turned out to have two different squashes in a 4-pack container. One ended up being a virus-ridden, but delicious delicate yellow squash. Unfortunately, I had to remove it so the virus didn’t spread. The other ended up being a knotty-warty gourd that would look better dried than it tastes. Its kind of tough and definitely has horrible flavor. So much for my summer squash! This problem could have been the result of many things — a lazy planter, a mixed up seed bag, a mis-labeled container. Who knows?!

My green beans…well, they turned out to be yellow wax beans. And, they were supposed to be bush beans, which I suppose they are. They don’t want to climb, but they aren’t really busy. They’re fairly leggy and not appropriate for their position in my tiny garden. The fruit (yes, bean pods are technically a fruit) are delicious. I think I like them better than my usual green beans.

So, what’s my point? I guess just to illustrate that plant life is incredibly diverse. We can hope to get the exact cultivar advertised (cultivar = cultivated variety), but there are many uncontrollable factors can contribute to the plant that finally emerges when we put its seed into the ground! The diversity of the plant world is amazing. As much as I wish I had delicate summer squash, I’m looking at this as an opportunity to learn how to dry gourds. Maybe they’ll make a nice decoration on a thanksgiving table!