Diane Relf, Extension Specialist, Environmental Horticulture Posted April 1997 Plants reproduce asexually and sexually. Asexual reproduction is the propagation or perpetuation of a species by vegetative means. It is also referred to as clonal propagation because in most cases the offspring are genetically identical to the parent plants.
Plants reproduce sexually by means of seeds or spores.
Humans have utilized asexual and sexual methods for plant propagation, cloning for the maintenance of desirable cultivars, and seed propagation for the development of cultivars. Many cultivars of popular vegetable or ornamental plants are described as hybrids. Hybrid seed production uses genetic recombination in a predictable way. F1 hybrids, in contrast to their true-breeding parents, are not true breeding. Seeds produced by an F1 hybrid tend to develop into plants that are highly variable and generally inferior to the F1 hybrid parents.