Plant Families
Why Families?Some of you may be wondering why we’ve decided to organize the seeds by families instead of seed saving difficulty or in alphabetical order.
The answer is this that by forcing you to start looking at which plants are in what families we hope that you will find it easier to avoid cross pollination. There are often many species within a family and only plants of the same species will cross pollinate. The species name will be Latin and characterized by italics on this website. We want to avoid hybrid seeds (intentional or unintentional) in our libraries, but we don’t want to scare you away from growing and saving the plants that can cross pollinate easily–that’s why we want you to understand which plants will cross with one another.
There are often many species within a family and only plants of the same species will cross pollinate. Always look at the Latin name to determine which species a plant is from, that way you’ll know whether or not there’s the danger of cross pollination within your own garden.
For example: Members of the Squash Family propagate through cross-pollination. Within the Squash Family there are many species. Say you want to grow pumpkins and butternut squash, will you have to worry about them cross pollinating and creating hybrid seed? No, Pumpkins are of the species pepo, and Butternut are of the species moschata, so they can be planted close together without the risk of contaminating the seed for next year. However, if you wanted to plant summer squash alongside your pumpkins you would run the risk of cross-pollination because they also belong to the species pepo. There are ways to avoid cross-pollination and ensure varietal purity, visit our page titled Start Saving Seeds to find out how.
The answer is this that by forcing you to start looking at which plants are in what families we hope that you will find it easier to avoid cross pollination. There are often many species within a family and only plants of the same species will cross pollinate. The species name will be Latin and characterized by italics on this website. We want to avoid hybrid seeds (intentional or unintentional) in our libraries, but we don’t want to scare you away from growing and saving the plants that can cross pollinate easily–that’s why we want you to understand which plants will cross with one another.
There are often many species within a family and only plants of the same species will cross pollinate. Always look at the Latin name to determine which species a plant is from, that way you’ll know whether or not there’s the danger of cross pollination within your own garden.
For example: Members of the Squash Family propagate through cross-pollination. Within the Squash Family there are many species. Say you want to grow pumpkins and butternut squash, will you have to worry about them cross pollinating and creating hybrid seed? No, Pumpkins are of the species pepo, and Butternut are of the species moschata, so they can be planted close together without the risk of contaminating the seed for next year. However, if you wanted to plant summer squash alongside your pumpkins you would run the risk of cross-pollination because they also belong to the species pepo. There are ways to avoid cross-pollination and ensure varietal purity, visit our page titled Start Saving Seeds to find out how.
