“Cultivar,” a portmanteau of “cultivated” and “variety,” refers specifically to a plant variety that humans have intentionally bred or selected for desirable traits, rather than one that evolved naturally in the wild. You’ll hear it used in discussions around home gardening, rare houseplants, coffee and tea sourcing, wine grapes, or produce. Here’s a tip: Use “cultivar” instead of “species” if human intervention helped create the strain. For example, all apples are the same species, but Honeycrisps and Granny Smiths are cultivars.