Webster’s Dictionary defines hybrid as “an offspring of genetically differing parents.” One of their descriptions for standard reads “something set up as a rule for measuring or as a model to be followed.” What does this have to do with gardening? Flower and vegetable varieties are classified as hybrids or standards, and the differences between them are important when it comes to selecting seeds or plants for the garden.
In the plant world hybrids result from the transfer of pollen of one specific variety of a group of plants with the pollen of another genetically different variety from the same group.
While this can occur by chance, and indeed many excellent varieties have been produced purely by the chance meeting of pollen, most hybrids are the result of meticulous cross-breeding between carefully chosen parents to produce seed with just the right characteristics.
The seed produced from hybridizing is called an F1 hybrid. It could exhibit one or several characteristics that gardeners find desirable in flower and vegetable varieties, such as large fruit or flowers, earlier and higher yields, uniform appearance, weather tolerance and disease resistance.
Only the breeder who conducted the initial cross will know the exact combination of parent plants. He then owns an exclusive on that variety. Only a very small percentage of the crosses made each year ever become a success that actually reaches our gardens at some point.
Standards are sometimes called “open pollinated” varieties. They are produced by pollen being carried by wind or insects in open fields from one plant to another. Although the effect is there is a lot of genetic material floating around, standard varieties have usually stabilized over generations, producing plants that are fairly similar.
Sometimes though plants that are very different from the others will turn up, simply because all of this different genetic material interacting in the garden. I have no doubt that much of this amorous activity takes place at night, so we don’t notice! Perhaps an orange flower will take its place amongst a clump of reds, or there will be an unusually large crop of radishes produced where you let plants go to seed last year. You just never know what will emerge from the ground.
Hybrids are not necessarily better than standards. In fact many experienced gardeners swear by the old favourite standards and claim that F1 hybrids are nowhere near as exceptional as the plant breeders claim they are. This is an argument that can only be settled in your own garden.
One important fact to keep in mind if you are saving seed for next year’s garden: hybrid varieties rarely produce seed which is “true.” You may have planted F1 hybrid pink snapdragons last year, but the plants produced this year won’t necessarily be pink. They most likely will produce flowers that are the colours of the two parents. Standard varieties, however, are more reliable, faithfully reproducing each year the same qualities that were exhibited in previous years.
