Gardening Question of the Week:
What’s the Difference Between a Variety and a Cultivar?

Plant names can be very confusing. One person's 'Love Lies Bleeding' is another's 'Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate'. Then there are those taxonomy enigmas where Actaea is the plant formerly known as Cimicifuga. My feeling is, if the person you're talking to knows what you're talking about, it doesn't really matter if you've got the right name or know how to pronounce it in Latin.

The only time it's truly important that you get the name of a plant right is when you are shopping for a specific plant. The full Latin name will guarantee you get the plant you intended. But even then, it's not important to know the difference between cultivar and variety. Where these terms factor in is if you're planning to propagate more plants. So what's the difference?

Variety

Varieties happen naturally. Plant varieties are changes in a plant species that occur in nature, through cross-pollination, mutation and adaptation. For instance, when a white flowering variety is discovered of a plant that has only been known to bloom pink.

Most varieties will produce seed that grows a plant just like them.

Variety names follow the species and are always italicized and lower case, for example, alba: Baptisia leucantha alba. (Older nomenclature sometimes designated varieties by preceding the name with the abbreviation var.)

Cultivar

Cultivar is a contraction of "cultivated variety". Cultivars are plants that have been intentionally bred to have certain characteristics, like purple foliage or more petals. Cultivars don't occur naturally.

Cultivars usually do not grow true from seed and will need to be propagated by some means other than seed, like grafting, cuttings or repeated hybridization. However they are only considered a cultivar if the distinguishing characteristics that make them unique from the original plants are retained when they are propagated.

Cultivar names are not italicized. They appear after the species name and are enclosed in single quotes, for example: Coreopsis verticillata 'Zagreb'. (Older nomenclature sometimes designated cultivars by preceding the name with the abbreviation cv.)