Volunteer (botany)

 ( Botany ) 

In gardening and agronomy terminology, a volunteer is a plant that grows on its own, rather than being deliberately planted by a farmer or Gardening. The action of such plants — to sprout or grow in this fashion — may also be described as volunteering.

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Background Volunteers often grow from that float in on the wind, are dropped by , or are inadvertently mixed into compost. Some volunteers may be encouraged by gardeners once they appear, being watered, fertilized, or otherwise cared for, unlike weed, which are unwanted volunteers.

Volunteers that grow from the seeds of specific are not reliably identical or similar to their parent and often differ significantly from it. Such Open pollination plants, if they show desirable characteristics, may be selected to become new cultivars.

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Agriculture In Crop rotation, self-set plants from the previous year's crop may become established as weeds in the current crop. For example, volunteer winter wheat will germinate to quite high levels in a following Rapeseed crop, usually requiring chemical control measures.

In agricultural research, the high purity of a harvested crop is often desirable. To achieve this, typically a group of temporary workers will walk the crop rows looking for volunteer plants, or "rogue" plants in an exercise typically referred to as "roguing".

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See also

• Domestication
• Escaped plant
• Hemerochory
• Invasive species
• Noxious weed
• Weed

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