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Article: Cultivar
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- Plant Sciences
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Cultivar
Horticultural plants of the same species that are distinctive enough to be given a name are called cultivars, which is short for "cultivated variety." A cultivar can be distinguished from other similar cultivars by some combination of characters, including appearance, color, taste, size, and pest resistance. Although the terms variety and cultivar are used interchangeably, cultivar is not the same as a botanical variety, which is a taxonomic category below the species level that can apply to both wild and cultivated plants.
According to rules for naming plants, cultivar names must be in modern languages and not italicized. The first letters are capitalized and the name is either ...