Danita said:...
Yes, people don't always know the difference between a named seed strain and a cultivar that must be asexually propagated.
I think this practice contributes to that confusion: some seed traders will write "OP" on a seed packet, intending to convey "the pollen parent of THESE SEEDS is whatever the wind and insects happened to blow around". They might be isolated, or might be planted shoulder-to-shoulder with cousins and hybrids.
But the seed recipient sees "OP" and thinks "Oh, good! It must be an OP
VARIETY, hence not any kind of hybrid or unstable cross. Good, it will come true from seeds, so I'll just bag my plant and re-offer the seeds with the name that was on the pkt I received".
The next trader gets F3 seeds but doesn't know how off-brand they are unless they look up the alleged variety and notice that their "OP variety" is really some generations after an F1cross.
Now that I know how differently "OP" is used by different people, I assume that any traded seed is cross-pollinated unless the trader spells out the isolation method used.
And I Google the variety to determine whether F1 or open-pollinated-VARIETY.
