"Cultivar" is short for cultivated variety. In other words, someone discovered a species plant that displayed some particular, appealing characteristic not usually found in the run-of-the-mill species. They then selected this particular plant and specifically cultivated this variety of the species to produce more plants which display the chosen characteristic. Hence, they cultivated this variety of the plant (cultivar) because they thought it would sell better than the straight species.

IronBelly

A cultivar generally means a cloned natural plant or a cloned hybrid plant. Seeds of clones will seldom result in seedlings that resemble the parent plant. Varigated foliage plants are most often clones.

A variety is a sub group of a species, in which the plants share a similar trait. Seeds of variety will grow true.

Consider dogs. Australian shepherds are a variety of dog, if you breed two Australian shepherds, you get a Australian shepherd puppy. A blue merle shephard is like a cultivar (except they aren't cloned). If you breed two you will end up with a litter of puppies, some merle and some tricoloured.

To answer your question, was your Joe Pye Weed labeled as a cultivar or variety? It should have had another name ie Joe Pye Weed cultivar "Beautiful" or Joe Pye Weed variety Ohio. If it was just labeled Joe Pye Weed it may simply be the species and not a cultivar or variety, in that case the seeds will produce more Joe Pye Weed.

If it was a cultivar, the seeds will produce Joe Pye Weed but not Joe Pye Weed "Beautiful". If a variety, the seeds should produce Joe Pye Weed var Ohio.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cultivar vs Variety vs Species

Cultivar--> a form deviating from the wild type and propagated asexually in order to preserve the deviant features.

The gist is--seeds aren't asexual propagation, so the plants that grow from them don't represent a cultivar even if the parent did.

Whether it happens to have the features of the cultivar, on the other hand, depends entirely on the genetic basis of the traits in question and the genotypes of the parent plant or plants. So it will vary between plants, between traits, and on whether the seeds result from self-fertilization or outcrossing.

Patrick Alexander

The rule I follow is, "If it has a name in quotes, it won't be true from seed."
t

I thank each and every one of you for your wonderful explanations. This is such an interesting topic!
Happy gardening,
Karen

To add a bit to the good info above; you may well know this beenature, but in case not, cloning, or asexual propagation is rather simple, not neccessarily a lab endeavor. Pieces of the desired plants are taken; these could be herbaceous top growth cuttiings, root cuttings, or simple division of clumps. In essence, it is the *same* plant propagated, and all of these methods will result in a plant identical to the original plant. For a cultivar, selected for desirable traits, this is the way to go. Mass propagation is attained by tissue culture, where small bits of plants are grown in laboratory conditions.

Yep, they are all clones, but ya gotta love how plants will grow from cut off bits of themselves. Thanks be humans can't do the same! It'd be a mighty crowded world...

In getting seed true to the cultivar, read cultivar as "particular individual". If it's a selection from a native population, seed may come true depending on isolation from other individuals of the species . With Joe Pye, I'd doubt it, as the major pollinators, butterflies, can travel great distance, and are likely to bring in other Joe Pye pollen, resulting in natural hybrids. They may or may not exhibit traits of parent plants, or a lovely crossing of both, jes like all us American mutts do.