Variety vs Cultivar vs Sport - Gardening Parlance - February 2023
I'm nothing if not a gardener who keeps learning with every shovelful of dirt and every keystroke digging around the Web. And, I'm also guilty of calling things the wrong name from time-to-time. Part of what I've tried to do is to learn the actual plant names (genus species) vs. the trade names. But, I've also thrown around the terms 'variety' and 'cultivar' and 'sport' all over the place and NOT really learned when/where to use each one. What prompted me to think about the terms was an email from Gardeners Supply where they showed some 'common gardening terms' including Variety and Cultivar. Here's a landing page they have of those and other gardening terms like hybrid, heirloom and open-pollinated. A couple of nuggets from that page : Many commonly available plants are varieties or cultivars, with interesting features that make them more desirable than the straight species. Some cultivars are patented, making it illegal to propa