So I grew basil from seed this year, and planted it alongside oregano seeds. None of the oregano came up at all, but the basil went crazy, I have about 25 plants. I potted up some of the basil seedlings to make room for the oregano plants I was forced to buy, and about 2 weeks later noticed this plant in one of the pots. It looks like oregano but isn't velvety, and smells like oregano and basil combined. You can see the basil in the picture behind the strange plant. So weird. Has anyone done this or know if it's happened before?

In my experience, oregano isn't velvety. Dittany is...


oregano is..

I planted Greek Oregano and it's kind of fuzzy. The leaves on the weird plant look exactly like the ones on the oregano, minus the fuzz.

I think you'll need to grow that little plant out to see what the flowers look like before an ID will be likely.

Don't think Basil could cross with Oregano anyway, but if they did, the most common way is by cross-pollination which requires the flowers to bloom, produce seeds, then the seeds to germinate. This little plant grew from a seed, right? There might be another variety of Basil in with the seeds you got. Or a sport.

Mizshelli said:I planted Greek Oregano and it's kind of fuzzy. The leaves on the weird plant look exactly like the ones on the oregano, minus the fuzz.

Nope. I bought what the store labeled 'greek oregano' with velvety fuzzy leaves too. It isn't greek oregano. It is dittany of crete.

Oregano doesn't have velvety leaves. You grew regular oregano.

Dittany of Crete (Origanum dictamnus)

I should add that there seems to be enough confusion about this plant even here in the plant database pictures. You will see the dittany picture on the greek oregano page here too, along with a picture of non fuzzy leaf greek oregano. I think what happened is that some people call dittany greek oregano as a 'common' name. They obviously aren't the same plant but they are very closely related. Marjoram is pretty closely related to both of them too. Regardless, as said above, you didn't grow some mutant seed mix of the both of them since basil and oregano can't mix - and yeah, they especially can't osmosis mix the two seeds into one plant. What you grew looks like regular oregano.

Hmmm. Good to know. Except---the weird plant started getting flower heads and they looked exactly like the basil. And the oregano I planted tastes and smells like oregano while the weird plant is a strange smell. I would be happy if that little odd plant is a real oregano though. Would save me some time getting it next year.
I've never heard of dittany before, but if that's what I've planted, I'm calling Bonnie Plants, cuz they labeled it. Lol

Here's pictures of the oregano I purchased to plant.

i know ! Seeds should be labled like M&Ms. "May contain different varieties" !
Its a diferent variety. Theres a bunch of them. Oregano is strong smelling. So..you might say the oregano rubbed off on the basil. Some basil smell different also.

Give this link on Basil a look...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...


and Oregano

http://pantrygardenherbs.com/s...