Talk:Open pollination

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Vandalism by Novangelis

As can be seen from Novangelis' history he is stalking whatever user is associated with Starfire777 and / or his friends. I suggest reverting whatever edits are made this pesron makes as it is clearly trolling, a childish kind, in which Novangelis appears to try to one up Starfire or "dirty" whatever edits Starfire makes. It's absurd and needs to stop if Wikipedia wants to have credibility.Examineroftruth (talk) 10:23, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Blog added to Further Reading section

A blog was recently added to the Further Reading section, which I have removed. It was Justin Huhn. "A Clear Definition of Open-Pollinated & "Heirloom" seeds". Seed Saving Articles: Plant Breeding, Seed Saving, Subsistence Gardening. The SeedKeepers. Retrieved 2014-05-31.

That's somewhat problematic since self-published sources are not acceptable as wikipedia citations (of course, this wasn't an actual citation). A more serious problem, though, is that is not correct. It states "Today, the term 'heirloom' has become synonymous with 'open-pollinated,' or 'non-hybrid.'" which just isn't true. There is a modern industry of plant breeding that has nothing to do with heirloom cultivars, and produces open-pollinated cultivars. See for example this web page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:55, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ambiguity

For years, my definition of "open pollinated" has been that the plant in question breeds true--if you save the seeds of an "open pollinated" or "true breeding" inbreeder, or save the seeds of an open pollinated outbreeder while protecting it from being fertilized by other cultivars, those seeds will produce plants that are similar/identical to their parents. So open pollinated, or "OP" as often coded in seed catalogues, was a term that was used in contrast to hybrids.

The opening paragraphs of the page suggest a very different definition, one that better matches the dictionary definition of the words "open" and "pollination" but one that, IMO, doesn't match the meaning that's most often intended by gardeners and farmers.

I feel that this ambiguity should be dealt with and explained in the article, but I'm not sure how.ChickenFreak (talk) 06:28, 9 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Returning several months later: Well, I picked how. I split the two different definitions of open-pollinated into two sections. ChickenFreak (talk) 05:37, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that the article title is not "Open pollinated" but "Open pollination". There is actually no ambiguity. If the plant breeds true under open pollination, then it is referred to as "open pollinated". It is not called an "open pollination plant". The article now states ""Open pollination" generally refers to seeds that will "breed true."" which is not true. Another problem is that the page has no lead section, as required by WP:LEAD. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:30, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The article is "open pollination" but the phrase "open pollinated" redirects to the article--if that concept is off topic for the article, then Wikipedia has no home for that concept. And the use of "open pollinated" to refer to seeds that breed true is a fairly fundamental concept to gardeners and seed savers, one that does need a home. The article contains a variety of information (not just now, but before I changed it), some that seems to be about uncontrolled pollination in nature, and some that seems to be about the concept of "open pollinated" in the context of controlled plant breeding, some of which seems to be a sort of mix of the two. What is the solution? A disambiguation page? But in that case, what would the two resulting pages be called? ChickenFreak (talk) 07:17, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Edited to add: As an example, the Heirloom Plant page uses the term "open pollination" in what appears to be the sense of true-breeding seeds. ChickenFreak (talk) 07:22, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]