Quote:
Originally Posted by Ann123
I don't know if celery can cross with parsley. They have a very different Latin name.
I found this: https://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/687163/#b
Seems like par-cel is what we call 'cutting celery' here, if I understand this thread right. That is a celery variety that produces more leaves and less stem. |
Thanks for questioning - I don't remember where I read it originally, it was a few years ago when I was saving celery seed. I just went looking and I found this reference (not the same one I saw before, which cautioned not to plant them near one another!) Apparently it is possible to create interspecies hybrids between parsley and celery, but looks like the chances of an accidental cross in an open pollination scenario are very small or negligible - much less of a worry than I was led to believe.
http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu...ery/Celery.htm
"For intergeneric crosses there are at least two independent reports on hybridization between parsley Petroselinum crispum and celery. Madjarova and Bubarova (1978) used three cultivars of celery and two of parsley. The parsley ‘Lister’ x celery ‘Pioneer’ cross resulted in a new parsley cultivar known as ‘Festival 68’. They also reported new forms of leaf celery from these crosses, characterized by higher vitamin C, carotene, essential oil and amino acid content, and an improved celeriac line.
The second report, by Honma and Lacy (1980) had the objective of transferring late blight resistance from parsley to celery. However, the level of resistance in the hybrid derivatives was weak. This may have occurred because parsley is susceptible to a different species of the pathogen, Septoria petroselini. For the crossing experiment, they used green stem color from parsley as marker for hybrid detection, which is dominant over yellow stems present in the celery parent. ‘Golden Spartan’ a yellow celery variety, was allowed to outcross with parsley. Three green seedlings were found among 1000 yellow seedlings germinating from the open pollinated seed collected from the celery parent. Later attempts to repeat these experiments have failed."