Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
dan8_gw

Will the seeds from a single fruit produce identical plants?

I know that often times fruits do not come true by seed.
But say I planted 20 pomegranate seeds from the one same fruit, will all of the offspring be identical or will there be variances in the set?

Or do variances only occur if I get the seeds from multiple fruits that have each been pollinated by a different tree?

Comments (7)

  • Raw_Nature
    11 years ago

    Dan8:

    I'm no expert but I assume all the offspring will be different to some extent.. That's how nature works. Only time your going to get indentical clones is from cloning/ grafting... Hope this helps

    Joe

  • fabaceae_native
    11 years ago

    Raw is right... even though the seeds have the same parents (or parent in the case of many self-fertile plants like pomegranate), they will be genetically different since they are like regular siblings, but not twins. I imagine there is a great deal of genetic variation in pretty much any pomegranate variety.

    Some plants do produce twin seeds, called polyembryonic. They are easy to recognize since you will see two embryos inside one seed coat (try opening some mango seeds and you'll almost certainly find some like this).

  • Bradybb WA-Zone8
    11 years ago

    So if I plant Flavor Grenade Pluot seeds,the resulting plants may not be Flavor Grenade and could turn out to be some kind of Plum? Thanks,Brady

  • Raw_Nature
    11 years ago

    If I plant a apple seed from a granny smith. It could end up being a small red crabapple. Hope this helps.
    Joe

  • john_in_sc
    11 years ago

    If you plant seeds from a Flavor Grenade - they most likely won't be one of those.... That's an interspecies hybrid.... No telling what you will get....

    There are some really old "Land race" varieties of self fertile fruit - that more or less come up reasonably true... assuming they came out of a fairly good sized block of the same trees... A good example of this is the Indian Cling peach....

    But... Unfortunately, you just have a pretty darned good chance you won't get the *Same* as the parent... That's why folks graft or do vegetative propagation....

    But.. Don't let that stop you from trying it out.... While it may not be identical - it may very well be worthwhile none-the-less...

    Thanks

  • dan8_gw (Northern California Zone 9A)
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Thanks guys for your input.
    I see what you mean fabaceae, thanks for the explanation. So it looks like the seeds from one fruit will produce offspring with different traits. I have seen seeds with two embryos inside one seed coat, I think they're common in orange seeds.

    @Bradybb. Yea most likely you won't exactly get a grenade pluot. Funny thing is, I tried the grenade pluot for the first time a few days ago and that fruit is pretty delicious, it's very sweet. I would love to have a tree.

  • fabaceae_native
    11 years ago

    More about pomegranates...
    as you probably already know, they are very easy to root from dormant cuttings, which is the typical form of propagation.

    Several common named varieties were selected seedlings of other earlier varieties. Granada, to name one, is a bud-sport (a mutation) of Wonderful, and the famous new variety Angel Red is thought to be a seedling of Granada. Of course these examples are all one out of thousands that did not make it to the big time, so to speak.

Sponsored
Hoppy Design & Build
Average rating: 5 out of 5 stars9 Reviews
Northern VA Award-Winning Deck ,Patio, & Landscape Design Build Firm