If we do have a glossary, I have a vote about the meaning of "OP" or "open pollinated".
I recently encounted a new usage of the term that frankly horrified me because it contradicts the existing meaning of the term, and makes meaningless every traded or purchased seed packet labelled "OP".
The new usage is like using the term "organic vegetable" to mean any vegetable that contains carbohydrates, i.e. "every single vegetable ever grown", even if drenched in malathione and urea.
"OP" DOES refer to a strain, variety or cultivar that "comes true from seed" when crossed with itself.
Thus it excludes F1 hybrid strains, other hybrid strains, any strain that is not stable, and garden practices that cause it have more than (say) 10% cross-pollination with random other strains.
But "OP" means the STRAIN, not the practices under which it was multplied.
If you want to specify how 'clean' or how outbred it may be, that is a different matter.
You should say something like:
"OP, grown fairly near some cross-polinators" or
"OP grown in fairly reasonable isolation" or
"OP grown XX feet away from XXX strain".
That original meaning is usefull because it means one thing:
- - if you grow and cross and save and trade this seed,
- - you and others will grow out a population similar to the known parents, and
- - can preserve a known and valued cultivar.
It is also usefull because it excludes some important things:
- F1 hybrid seeds that won't come true,
- seeds of unknown pollen sources
- heavily out-crossed mongrel seeds: not for preserving heirlooms
It is widely-understood to mean that by breeders, seed vendors and seed buyers.
- - -
But it DOES NOT (or should not) be used to mean "randomly cross-pollinated to an unspecified degree with unspecified other varieties because it was grown and allowed to pollinate uncontrolledly with unknown (possible) nearby cross-pollinators".
That new sense means almost nothing, since in that sense the seed could be almost anything:
- a clean OP strain propagated cleanly, 99% with itself
- OP parents heavily cross pollinated with very different strains
- OP parents pollinated mostly by themsleves and maybe some others
- F1 Hybrid parents with or without other contamination.
The only thing it excludes is controlled pollination, e.g. by separation distance or bagging and hand-pollination.
I would argue that the second meaning has very little communication value, and it subtracts from the very significanty value of the traditional usage.
Instead of highjacking a needed term already in wide use, someone could say instead 'random-pollinated' (RP) or "unkown pollen parents" or "uncontrolled pollination" (UP).
I've seen definitions that go something like: "naturally pollinated by birds and bees and wind", but that's a lot like calling a vegetable "organic" because it contains carbohydrates. What does it mean other than "not bagged" and "not hand pollinated"?
My objection comes not from any issues with birds, bees or wind, but rather because the contradictory usage "pollutes" the term for everyone who wanted to communicate the original meaning of "OP strain" - for example, everyone who breeds, sells or buys seeds or tries to preserve heirloom strains.
(I kind of think that "OP" should probably not be used to describe an adaptivar or landrace, because it would be more proper to refer to those as "populations" not "strains".
A landrace is a population of plants or seeds containing a population of genes that (in combination and recombination) tend to be survivable or productive in a certain region. Not a strain, neither "OP" not "Hybrid".
Maybe there should be some terminology to express how varied the genetics and expression of a landrace is.
But I would defer to people who create and preserve landraces to decide what they want to call them, as long as it does not hijack and confuse the meaning of an existing important term.)
