Four Bags Labeled Kale, Two Species and a 227 Percent Price Gap: How Microgreen Seed Actually Gets Named

The crop word on the bag is the least precise thing on it, and United States seed law does not require the thing that would fix that.

Here is the case that makes it concrete. On 2026-08-12 one catalogue listed four conventional kale microgreen seeds at one pound each:

The top listing is 227% above the bottom one, and one of the four is a different species from the other three. KX-1 is Brassica napus, the rapeseed species, not Brassica oleracea. All four are sold as kale, because "kale" is a crop word rather than a taxonomic one.

The price spread is not proof the cultivar caused it. Organic status, inventory, seed treatment and contract supply all move a seed price. The buyer-relevant fact is simpler: four bags carrying one crop word had different variety labels, different species fields and a threefold price range.

What the label is legally required to say

For vegetable seed in United States interstate commerce, the binding claims are kind and variety name. USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service stated on 2023-03-06 that there is no exception for vegetable seed. A brand may sit alongside the kind or variety, and it must be clearly identified as a brand rather than dressed up to look like the kind or variety.

What is not required is the botanical binomial. The regulations speak in terms of kind, variety and type. No provision found requires a Latin name on a domestic vegetable-seed packet at all.

What must appear scales with the pack. A vegetable-seed label of one pound or less meeting the germination standard states kind, variety and the interstate shipper's name and address or AMS code. Below-standard seed adds germination, test date and the words "Below Standard". Over one pound it also adds germination, test date and lot number.

And the Federal Seed Act reaches interstate commerce only. Seed grown, conditioned and traded wholly within one state sits outside it.

The enforcement is real where it applies. AMS calls false varietal labeling a serious violation and publishes settlements that include false kind and variety labeling. There is also an adjudicated wrong-variety case on record. So the crop name is enforceable insofar as it is the required kind and must not be false or misleading. It is not a license to swap a required variety for a slogan.

Species, cultivar and marketing name are three different things

Getting these apart is most of the work.

• Species is the scientific binomial placing the plant in a biological species, for example Brassica oleracea. It answers what plant this is.
• Cultivar is the selected material within that species, differentiated by stated characters and maintained by appropriate propagation, conventionally written in single quotes: Brassica oleracea 'Toscano'.
• Trade designation or marketing name is a selling device. The International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants says explicitly that a trade designation can market a cultivar, Group or grex in place of or alongside its accepted name.

So "microgreen", "dinosaur", "premium" or a brand can be useful search language and establishes neither species nor cultivar. A translated cultivar epithet used for marketing gets the same treatment: the Code makes it a trade designation, not automatically the accepted name.

A cultivar name is also not automatically a property right. The United States has no mandatory variety-registration system. Once a variety has been traded or sold under a name, that name cannot be changed and cannot be reused for another variety of the same kind. Separate protection exists through Plant Variety Protection, which USDA says runs 20 years, or 25 for vines and trees, plus plant and utility patents. That protects the variety, not ownership of every ordinary word used as a name.

Synonym sets are real, and they are not always one thing

Toscano kale is also called lacinato, Tuscan and dinosaur kale. North Carolina Cooperative Extension says so directly, and the catalogue's own category says "Lacinato (also known as Toscano or Dinosaur kale)". That is a genuine synonym set for one seller's named material.

Then the complication that matters. A British Columbia seed trial, run in 2016 and published in 2018, says many seed companies offer heirlooms named "Lacinato" that are not all the same, and its 14-entry trial treated their strains as maintained or selected differently.

So the synonym set holds within a seller and does not hold across sellers. Two bags both reading "Lacinato" can be different maintained strains. Ask for the cultivar designation, the seed-lot record, and whether the seller means an exact maintained cultivar, a type, or a marketing synonym, before treating two listings as the same thing.

Cress runs the same way in the other direction. One seller's listing sells "Curly Cress (Garden Cress)" and reports regional names including garden pepper cress, pepper grass, pepperwort and poor man's pepper. That is direct evidence one seller markets those aliases. It is not taxonomic proof, and a different seller's page identifies cress as Lepidium sativum, which is a cross-reference rather than a guarantee that every listing reading "cress" is that species.

Whether the species appears at all is a seller-by-seller choice

Practice differs sharply, and this is checkable rather than assumed.

• The catalogue with the four kale listings prints a Latin Name field on its product pages.
• A large competitor's broccoli microgreen seed mix page gives the crop, claims and growth information and no botanical-name field at all.
• The cress listing above **does not print Lepidium sativum**.

None of those is a violation, because no rule found requires a binomial. What share of United States packets carry one has never been measured, and settling it would take a regulator's nationwide packet audit.

This directory publishes what the packets do not

That gap is the reason the variety entries here are shaped the way they are, and it can be counted.

Two species here carry more than one entry, which is the same-word problem in miniature and is handled by keeping them apart rather than merging them: Beta vulgaris appears as both beet and Bull's Blood beet, and Brassica oleracea var. capitata appears as both green cabbage and red cabbage.

The 234 distinct trade names with no collisions is the point of a curated directory, not a claim about the market. The market is ambiguous. A directory does not have to be, and the way it avoids being ambiguous is by publishing the binomial the packet is not required to carry.

Garden cress carrying six names is the clearest single case, and it is the same crop that finished last or near last in two of the three consumer taste panels. A buyer who dislikes it under one name can buy it again under another.

What to actually do

What nobody has measured

• What share of United States seed packets print a botanical name. This needs a regulator's nationwide packet audit, and until then every statement about it is an impression.
• How often two bags carrying one cultivar name contain materially different strains. One trial found it for one kale name.
• Whether the species field changes what buyers pick. No study tests it.
• How much of a same-crop price spread is cultivar rather than organic status, inventory, treatment or contract supply. The four listings above cannot separate them.
• How often microgreen buyers receive a different variety than ordered. There is an adjudicated case and no rate.

Sources

Opened 2026-08-12. The naming counts across all 62 variety entries are this site's own, read from the botanical, botanicalFamily and soldAs fields. Prices are a single-date snapshot from one catalogue and are not a price history; the 227% figure is computed from the two displayed per-pound prices on that date.

• USDA AMS, varietal labeling requirements under the Federal Seed Act - the 2023-03-06 statement that kind and variety name are required with no exception for vegetable seed, that a brand may accompany them but must be clearly identified as a brand, and that false varietal labeling is a serious violation.
• 7 CFR Part 201, current - the Federal Seed Act regulations, framed in terms of kind, variety and type rather than a mandatory botanical binomial, and reaching interstate commerce rather than seed grown, conditioned and traded wholly within one state.
• USDA AMS, seed company records and the Federal Seed Act (PDF) - the September 2017 guide setting out what a label must carry at one pound or less against over one pound, including germination, test date, lot number and the "Below Standard" wording.
• USDA AMS, Federal Seed Act settlements (PDF) - published settlement examples including false kind and variety labeling.
• Agricultural Services Association v. Ferry-Morse - an adjudicated wrong-variety case.
• USDA AMS, variety name clearance and AMS variety naming guidelines - no mandatory United States variety-registration system, and the rule that once a variety has been traded or sold under a name that name cannot be changed or reused for another variety of the same kind.
• USDA Plant Variety Protection Office - certificates protecting qualifying new varieties for 20 years, or 25 for vines and trees, with rights to exclude marketing and sale and to manage certain breeding uses.
• International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants, ninth edition (PDF) - the cultivar definition, the convention of single quotation marks, and the explicit statement that a trade designation can market a cultivar, Group or grex in place of or alongside its accepted name, including a translated epithet used for marketing.
• NC State Extension, the nomenclature of horticultural plants - the species, cultivar and trade-designation hierarchy in plain terms.
• North Carolina Cooperative Extension, growing kale from seed - 'Toscano' kale also called lacinato, Tuscan and dinosaur kale, and described as coming from Italy.
• BC Seed Trials, Lacinato kale variety trial 2016 brief - the statement that many seed companies offer heirlooms named Lacinato that are not all the same, across a 14-entry trial treating their strains as maintained or selected differently.
• NRCS seed tag guide (PDF) - what a seed label and lot record actually contain.
• Practice, one catalogue's listings snapshotted 2026-08-12 and used only as dated observations of what was offered: Toscano at $25.73, Bright Green Curly at $32.65, KX-1 at $74.65 and carrying B. napus rather than B. oleracea, and Purple Reign F1 at $84.25, plus its Lacinato category page giving the synonym set and its microgreen vegetable catalogue as the naming universe audited.
• Practice, other sellers opened 2026-08-12 as records of what is printed: Mumm's Curly Cress and Garden Cress, listing garden pepper cress, pepper grass, pepperwort and poor man's pepper as regional names and not printing Lepidium sativum; True Leaf Market's broccoli microgreens seed mix, which gives crop, claims and growth information and no botanical-name field; and West Coast Seeds, which identifies cress as Lepidium sativum as a cross-reference.