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Understanding Hybrids

© Kenneth Joergensen

Garden centers and mail order companies sell a great number of plants and seeds listed as hybrid varieties. In recent years these plants have basically taken over the market at expense of the species. Some gardeners have in response given up on hybrids and grow only species to preserve them. What are you as a gardener suppose to grow?

It may be helpful to understand the biology of hybrids in order to make informed decisions and it is the reason for this article. We will do this through a story of the tulip.

The price of a house
The tulip was originally a wild flower growing in the Central Asia where it looked remarkable different from the beautiful flower we know today. It likely resembled some of the roadside flowers we find in the wild today.

Botanists started to hybridize the flower to make it even more decorative and tempting. It was first cultivated by Turkish growers in 1,000 AD and later in the Netherlands in the 17th century.

Hybrids were seen as signs of high status and demanded extremely high prices, some as high as the cost of a house. In this case hybridizing was done to enhance the beauty of the flower and, in the process, to improve the wealth of the hybridizer. The same motives can be said to be behind hybridizing efforts today. The greenhouse industry continuously seeks to improve their products to stay competitive.

Genes and Traits
To understand hybrids, it is important to understand traits.

In nature, plants, humans, and animals inherit traits which make them resemble their parents. These traits are passed from one generation to another by genes. A trait can be determined by a single gene, or by many different genes.

Example of traits would be flower color, height, disease tolerance, leaf shape, etc.

If a plant is propagated asexually - cloned - all the genes comes from a single parent and are typically identical to this parent. In sexually propagated plants - by seeds - the re-produced plant normally receives half of its genetic information from one plant and half from the other. Sexually propagated plants resemble, but are not identical to, their parents.

Species plants have often undergone a natural selection process where the specimen with the best survival skills has prevailed in the particular growing area. This has resulted in somewhat inbred plants with pure lines of traits. The offspring often looks and behaves like the parent. These plants are said to "come true to type" when propagated by seeds.

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