Have you recently browsed through a seed catalog and started to see the word grex and wondered what it meant?
Rather than a single, uniform hybrid a grex, also known as a hybrid swarm. is a genetically diverse population of seeds created by crossing several outstanding parent plants and then selecting over many generations.
The result is a living seed line with greater resilience, adaptability, and vigor, allowing plants to thrive across a range of conditions while still producing consistently beautiful, flavorful fruit.
In the world of seeds and plant breeding, a grex represents something deeply important: genetic diversity, resilience, and adaptability. Understanding what a grex is—and why it matters—can change how we think about gardening, seed saving, and our relationship with the living world.
Keep in mind that a grex is open-pollinated seeds and should not be confused with hybrid (F1) varieties. We encourage all of our gardener's to seed save and everything we offer is always open pollinated.
Seed saving opens a world of adapting seeds to your specific region as well as changing and unusual climate fluctuations. Bottlenecks in plant and even bee genetics have become prevalent, causing weak and susceptible genetics. In the world we live in, string traits of adaptability and vigor are what is going to allow our gardens to transcend the many unpredictable changes before us.
The word grex comes from Latin, meaning flock or group. In botanical terms, a grex refers to a population of plants grown from a cross between two parent plants, where the resulting offspring show natural variation rather than uniformity.
Unlike a single, stabilized variety that produces nearly identical plants, a grex includes many expressions of the same lineage—different sizes, colors, flavors, growth habits, and levels of resilience, all within one seed population.
We are beginning to offer more grex varieties as well as growing out more of these varieties on our farm. In essence a grex can be considered a modern variety that has been bred for our times. Stay posted on more coming your way!
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