I usually use it in the sense Diane describes, to refer to a plant grown from a seed as opposed to a plant vegetatively propagated from a named cultivar, e.g., clone. In this sense, when your seedlings reach flowering stage, you can select from them any that you wish to name and propagate further. Used thus in the context of breeding orchids, daylilies, etc. Jim Shields retire daylily hybridizer At 11:20 AM 4/14/2011 -0700, you wrote: >I usually use "seedling" to refer to newly germinated plants, but I >also use it in a genealogical sense: "This (giant rhododendron, >camellia etc) is a seedling of (usually a named form of the same >species)." > >Diane Whitehead ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344