Cultivar is short for a CULTIvated VARiety. A cultivar is a plant bred by humans for certain characteristics—such as color, drought resistance, height, or even petal shape. A true native plant is not a cultivar, because it has been untouched by humans.

What is a cultivar? Cultivar vs. Native vs. Nativar

If you’ve ever stared at a plant tag that says Echinacea purpurea ‘Hot Papaya’ and wondered what those single quotes mean, you’re in the right place. That’s a cultivar, and understanding what that word means will make you a smarter plant shopper.

A cultivar is a plant that’s been selected and propagated by humans. Cultivar is short for cultivated variety. Read on to learn how (and why) cultivars are made.

What is a cultivar?

We briefly mentioned what a cultivar is in the intro.

Now let’s answer your next question:

Where do cultivars come from?

Cultivars can be made on purpose or found naturally. Sometimes a cultivar is deliberately bred: plant breeders cross two plants to get orange petals instead of purple, or a shorter stem, or bigger flowers. (We’ll introduce a few other science-y ways they are made in a few paragraphs.) Other times, a cultivar starts as a natural oddball: you’re walking through the woods and find one redbud with deep purple leaves while all the others are green.

If you take a cutting from that tree and propagate it, you’ve just created a cultivar.

The key to a cultivar is that humans chose it and are keeping it going. Without us propagating it on purpose, that purple-leaved tree would just be one oddball in a forest of green ones. Its trait might get passed on to a few offspring, or it might disappear entirely in a generation or two.

Cultivars = genetic variation, curated

Just like people, every plant has slightly different DNA. One black-eyed susan might have taller stems. Another might have darker petals. Another might handle drought better. When humans notice these differences—whether they happened naturally or through deliberate breeding—and propagate those plants to keep those features, that becomes a cultivar.

What is a native cultivar, or ‘nativar’?

A native cultivar or nativar is a native plant that has been curated by humans to look and behave a certain way. There are countless native plant cultivars (or nativars) available.

A great example is heuchera (also called alumroot). Heuchera americana is the wild native species with green leaves. But walk into any garden center and you’ll see dozens of heuchera cultivars in colors ranging from deep purple to lime green to peachy orange, all bred from that original native plant.

This rainbow of heuchera is all cultivars

Resilient nativars

Cultivars are not just about color; sometimes nativars are bred to help withstand temperature or rainfall. For example, the redbud ‘Columbus’ has been bred to withstand colder temperatures. This redbud cultivar has made it possible for the tree to withstand rough midwestern and northeast winters.

More on nativars vs. native plants later. Now you may be wondering:

How are cultivars made?

Humans have been creatively cultivating plants and making cultivars for centuries. Although you may imagine scientists in lab coats, heads bent down over pipettes and beakers, generations of growers have saved seeds from their favorite plants. These plants are cultivars.

Today, cultivars are made in four different ways:

Selection: This is the process of choosing plants that have desirable traits and then propagating them to create a new population of plants with those traits. If a plant change happened naturally, that cultivar can also go by the name variety. (I know, another term! But stay with me!) The term ‘variety’ is useful because it helps us know the variation is naturally occurring.
Hybridization: This is the process of crossing two different varieties or species of plants in order to create a new variety with a combination of desirable traits from both parents. Hybridization took off in the 1950s.
Genetic engineering: (cue the lab coats) This is the process of manipulating the genetic makeup of a plant using biotechnology techniques such as CRISPR. Genetic engineering can be used to introduce new traits into a plant that it does not already possess.
Tissue culture: (more lab coats) This is a method in which small pieces of plant tissue are grown under sterile conditions and then used to create new plants.

Our kitchen table is filled with cultivars.

What about plants called heirlooms?

Tomatoes are a perfect example of cultivars. All the heirloom tomatoes we see today are cultivars. From the otherworldly ‘Brad’s Atomic’ grape tomatoes that look like staring into a bite-sized galaxy, to ‘Mr. Stripey’s’ juicy yellow-and-red circus tent—all these come from previous generations of growers using selection to create cultivars. Our kitchen table is filled with cultivars.

Any cultivar developed before 1951 is called a heirloom. Before 1951, growers selected their favorite seeds and saved them for planting the next year. There were thousands of these cultivars, passed down within families or grown in specific regions.

In 1951, technology shifted. Plant breeders introduced the first hybrid vegetable cultivars made in labs, and many of those old heirloom varieties disappeared. (If you’ve been to a big box nursery lately, you know how hard it is to find an heirloom.) The term heirloom tells you the cultivar came from old-fashioned seed saving rather than modern breeding methods. Thank the generations before for selecting and saving heirloom seeds.

Are cultivars bad?

It’s complicated. Here’s what to consider:

Native plants are the best food for wildlife

Cultivars can benefit humans, but native plants are more beneficial for bugs, birds, and animals. Some cultivars don’t have the same nutritional value that true native plants provide. Sometimes bugs and pollinators will ignore a native cultivar out of confusion because it looks so different from their true native plant relatives.

Sometimes cultivar flowers have no pollen at all

Here’s where cultivars get tricky for pollinators: some have been bred to have double blooms or massive showy flowers, and in the process, lost all their pollen. Those extra petals? They’re often modified stamens (the parts that make pollen). More petals = less pollen, or sometimes no pollen at all.

The smooth hydrangea cultivar ‘Annabelle’ (Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’) is a perfect example of this problem. Those huge white mophead blooms look spectacular, but they’re all show and no substance. The flowers are sterile, bred for size and showiness at the expense of everything that makes them useful to pollinators. A bee lands on ‘Annabelle’ expecting breakfast and finds an empty kitchen. (Technically, those big showy “petals” are sterile florets—modified flowers with no pollen, no nectar, nothing.) Read more in our Beginner’s Guide to Native Hydrangeas.

This is why the straight native species—smooth hydrangea without the ‘Annabelle’ name—is a better choice. The flowers are smaller and less showy, but they actually feed pollinators.

Now that we know the problems with adding lots of petals, let’s revisit purple coneflowers and their cultivars:

Native vs. Cultivar Coneflowers

Let’s compare a native purple coneflower to its cultivar cousin.
When you see them side by side, you have to wonder: how can pollinators understand this is the same plant?

Also check out the Canadian Wildlife Federation’s “Native Plants 101” guide, which has lots of helpful, quick information.

And one more thing to consider:

Cultivars can create problems in the wild

When cultivars escape gardens and spread into wild areas, they can mess with the genetics of native plant populations. This can make those wild populations more vulnerable to disease or other threats.

Here’s an example: if we breed a fern to handle drought better, we might accidentally remove the genes that protect it from a native fungus. If that cultivar spreads into the wild and crossbreeds with native ferns, we could be spreading a fatal weakness through the whole population. Introducing cultivars to natural habitats is complicated.

On the other hand, there can be benefits for cultivars too.

That said, native cultivars (nativars) are always better than planting non-native species.

Lots of botanists agree. From the The Midwestern Native Garden:

“True native plants don’t include native-plant hybrids and cultivars, which ‘have been bred for showiness and may have lost much of their nectar and pollen characteristics,’ notes the Canadian Wildlife Federation.”

What are the benefits of cultivars?

Cultivars give us options. With climate change, some cultivars are bred for better heat tolerance or disease resistance. Cultivars also give us endless variety in colors, shapes, and sizes for our gardens and dinner tables.

How can I tell if a plant is a cultivar?

Look at the plant tag. A cultivar name comes after the Latin name and appears in single quotes.

Both tags above show coneflower (Echinacea) cultivars. The cultivar names are ‘Sweet Sandia’ and ‘Ruby Giant.’

Let’s take another look at cultivar favorite, heuchera.

Native plant: Heuchera americana or Heuchera villosa (the official Latin names for the species)

Heuchera cultivars include:

Make your own cultivar!

You don’t need a botany PHD or a lab to make your own cultivar. People have been doing it for centuries. (Read Missouri Prairie Foundation’s “Natives, Cultivars, and Nativars” for more background.)

Find a tomato that’s extra sweet? A black-eyed Susan that stays shorter and fits perfectly in your border? Take a cutting and root it. Or try cross-pollinating using a Q-tip. Just like that, you’ve made your own cultivar.

Don’t forget to give it a good name!

One last thing: most cultivars can only be propagated by a cutting—not seed

Here’s something important: most cultivars won’t grow true from seed. If you plant seeds from a cultivar, you’ll probably get something that looks like the original wild parent, not the cultivar you started with.

Why? Because the special features of most cultivars only exist in the plant itself, not in its seeds.

To grow more of a cultivar, you usually need to take a cutting to make a clone of the original plant.

A note for the lawyers: some corporate-made cultivars are copyright-protected

We hope you’re sitting down as you read this next paragraph.

Many cultivars sold in nurseries are under copyright from their parent growing company. That means it’s actually illegal to propagate them—even for your own garden. You’d be infringing on the company’s copyright. Plant companies spend years and enormous amounts of money using the techniques we described above to develop new cultivars. The law says that these cultivar plants are their intellectual property. It’s something to keep in mind as we consider planting cultivars.

And now you know all about cultivars!

To wrap it all up: cultivars have been created for centuries by people who noticed interesting variations in plants and selected what they liked. The oldest method is selection—just saving seeds from your favorites. Now we also have hybridization and lab techniques to help churn out new plants every year.

Cultivars give us variety: different colors, heights, flavors, and sometimes even resilience. But they don’t support wildlife or contribute to natural plant populations the way true native plants can.

Plant true natives whenever you can.

Now that you know what a cultivar is, go explore 150+ native plants in our Native Plant Library. Or go straight to our Best Native Host Plants for Butterflies to find some favorites. Or since we brought it up, explore our Beginner’s Guide to Native Heuchera, or our Beginner’s Guide to Native Coneflowers. Happy planting!

Written by Em Lessard. Em is the founder of The Plant Native and a Sustainable Landscapes-certified gardener.

Sources

Haynes, Cynthia. “Cultivar versus Variety.” Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. Accessed February 14, 2026.
Pringle, James S. “The Concept of the Cultivar.” Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 1, no. 2 (February 1975): 30-35. https://auf.isa-arbor.com/content/1/2/30.
Fehr, Walter R., and Walter P. Suza. “Types of Cultivars and Modes of Plant Reproduction.” Principles of Cultivar Development. Vol. 1: Theory and Techniques, Ames: Iowa State University Digital Press, 2024.
“Natives, Cultivars, and Nativars.” Missouri Prairie Foundation. Accessed February 14, 2026.
Finlay, Ron. “Plant Cultivar vs. Variety: What’s the Difference?” MasterClass. Accessed February 14, 2026.
“Understanding Garden Terminology.” Penn State Extension. Accessed February 14, 2026.
Ware, Charlotte M., ed. The Midwestern Native Garden: Native Alternatives to Nonnative Flowers and Plants. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2020.
“What’s the Difference Between a Cultivar, Selection and a Variety?” DRWakefield. September 4, 2023.