Plant is the 617th most common surname in England and Wales, where it represents 0.022% of the total population, and it is the 5729th most common name in the USA, where the figure is 0.002%. In North America, there may be some confusion of spelling with the French-Canadian name Plante, but this also is being tested in this study.

The Y-DNA evidence is already quite persuasive that Plant is an `effectively single origin' surname, despite being populous. However, by extending the number of Plants tested to around 50, we can expect to be able to make firmer pronouncements on whether Plant has single-ancestor (modal) origins, or is a multiple-origins surname as was previously held. A sufficient number of results is now avaiable at the 37-marker level to begin to piece together closest matches between the different Plant branches for which the documentary evidence does not provide genealogical links. A 37-marker test will help to reveal, eventually if not immediately, the closest Plant matches to your own ancestral Plant line.

If you are not suitable to be tested yourself, you can recruit suitable relatives for the Plant project.

You may be a female who is interested in a Plant line of descent. If you are familiar with genealogy, you will already be accustomed to the idea that you often need to look for collateral relatives (brothers, cousins, etc.) in order to make progress with tracing back your family lines. Only men have a Y-chromosome, which descends purely down the paternal line (i.e. from his father's father's father's etc. father): this carries information about this male-line of descent (which usually coincides with the descent of a surname).

Open to all `Plant like' names

Early planning for a Plant Study

Starting in 2001, volunteers were sought for studies on Plant-like names (any spelling). It was initially unclear what to expect. The earliest study for the name Sykes had shown it to be essentially a single-ancestor name despite the fact that it had been held to be a multiple-ancestor topographical name. Some have since questioned the reliability of this early Sykes study however.

An early focus for a DNA study of the Plant name related to:-

• investigating ancestral connections in particular branches of the name, with a view to connecting together various family tree "twigs" with more certainty; and,
• seeking evidence for Plant(e) Y-chromosome types migrating around England and France and to the rest of the world.

In Britain, the R clade (Celtic regions) is found mostly down the western side, with Scandinavian clades (Anglo-Saxon and Viking regions) found more to Britain's east. The `offspring' or `children' meaning of Plant can be associated in particular with the nearby Welsh language, though similar meaning is found in early English. The ancestors of the main Plant family have been found to belong to the R-P312+ sub-clade (all currently know sub-clades beneath it testing negative), which is rare in England but more common in Spain and Portugal. This sugests that, in past millennia, the ancestors of the Plants might have migrated from Spain through France to England.

Y-DNA testing does far more than just identify the clade, or haplogroup, of the person being tested. It identifies a unique signature for the particular branch of his surname, and so helps with the genealogy of the different branches of a surname.

Volunteered Plant-like and possibly-related name branches so far

Matching diagrams for Plant

Early volunteers (OA) had only 10 markers measured and the following Network diagram includes only Plant volunteers who have had at least as many as 12 markers measured. It shows differences in the measured values of these 12 markers. The labels correspond to the different volunteers and are identified in the table above, though where more than one volunteer matches exactly (larger circles) only one label is shown.

The largest red circle above shows that many of the Plant volunteers have exactly matching DNA signatures, at the 12 marker level, with other smaller red circles almost matching it. The yellow and green circles do not even nearly match, probably because of false paternity events, also called non paternity events (NPEs), though the two green circles almost match one another and the yellow circle labelled P16a corresponds to both P16a and P21a.

NPEs arise when the DNA signature has not been inherited from a Plant ancestor but from a different father, perhaps because of a wifely infidelity, or adoption, or any other mechanism by which the Plant surname is passed on in a different way from that of the y-chromosome signature of the true father. Though there is only about a 2% chance of a NPE at each generation, this can accumulate to around a 40% chance when all the generations of descent are taken into account throughout Plant surname history and this can explain the significant number of yellow and green circles.

When 37 markers are compared (see diagram below), the large red circle is differentiated into closely matching smaller red circles though those who have had only 25 or less markers measured do not appear in this diagram. The red circles are matching or nearly matching - imprecise matching to the ancestral Y-DNA signature can be expected because of occasional harmless mutations to the marker values down the generations. The yellow and green circles are more distant from the red and are almost certainly due to NPEs. The green circle corresponds to one of the pair of volunteers with (as well as a close genetic match at the 25 marker level) geographically close ancestry in south Lincolnshire.

In order to zoom in to see the indentity label of each circle, the above 37-loci diagram is split below into its matching core and its non-matching periphery. P19a and P29a are relatively distant from the core of the cluster but they have been confirmed to belong to the main English Plant family by both Deep Clade and 111-marker Y-DNA testing. The red circle labelled P28a corresponds to a pair of volunteers P28a and P28b who were already known from documentary evidence to be closely related.

In these 37-marker Network digrams, the genetic differences between pairs of volunteers are represented by the lengths of the lines joining them. I shall refer to these lines as the genetic network. In the following map, lengths of lines aside, the same genetic network is shown superimposed on a map of Ireland and England, apart from the omission of some of the volunteers whose earliest known male-line ancestors were in the USA. Solid lines are used for the links between genetic network neighbours for the main Plant family (red circles) whereas brolen lines are used for the less-meaningful links bewteen the "NPE" yellow and green circles.

The above map shows, for example, that the DNA-tested Plants whose earliest-known male-line ancestors were near Sheffield (P23a, P1a, P1c) are not only geographical neighbours on the map but also they are genetically linked by the network. This suggests that a particular branch of the Plant family found its way to that region as was already suspected for the genealogically-linked P1a and P1c but not necessarily for P23a. On the other hand, the genetic network is spread across the Irish sea and indicates that PT3a links back to England through a different branch of the Plant family from that of P25a, P28a and P29a, despite the geographical proximity of PT3a to P28a and P28b in Ireland.

Some caution is needed, however, in interpreting all of the details of the network on the map. The solid lines do not necessarily imply direct migration paths, especially when the genetic distance between linked neighbours in the network is large. The solid lines can also be misleading when the Y-DNA signature of a volunteer approximates that of the medieval ancestors of the main Plant family, such that there is nothing to tie it to any particular time since the fourteenth century. In particular, P20a evidently seems to have no mutation from the Plants' ancestral signature at this 37-marker level and it just happens that his earliest-known male-line ancestor was near Birmingham, in 1700. This is why several of the solid lines link to P20a near Brimingham though the ancestral Plant signature was probably earlier in the Plants' main homeland near the Cheshire-Staffordshire border (between P29a and P24a on the map). It is reasonable to suppose that the geographic focus of the lines joining to P20a on the map might better be placed near the Cheshire-Staffordshire border, though of course we only have sketchy details of the early genealogy of the main Plant family.

One way in which the genetic results can be arranged into a genealogical tree is shown below. At this 37-marker level, the number of harmless mutations is shown against each descending line in the tree. We can expect a better definition of this ancestral tree as more Plant volunteers come forward to be DNA tested and as more makers become available.

The genetic network for those who have had at least 67 markers measured is shown below. The red circles have diverged from this ancestral signature in their various ways, by occasional mutations down the generations, and the yellow circle has probably arisen from this same ancestral family, but through a female link (NPE) rather than down an intact male line.

More Plant volunteers will determine the network with more certainty. However, a few Plants have had 111 markers measured and the corresponding network diagram is shown below.

Some of the Plant volunteers have traced their paternal origins back only as far as ancestors overseas, such as in Ireland or the USA. However, for those who have traced their ancestry back to around the main Plant homeland in Staffordshire, England, the following map shows the location and date of their earliest known male-line ancestor. The colours of the circles have the same significance as in the above Network diagrams. The darker the brown of the background colour, the higher the proportion of Plants to the general population for each county, as derived from 1881 Census data, with the highest proportion being in the county of Staffordshire. The DNA data shows that a single Plant family (red circles) extends beyond the county boundaries of Staffordshire by the eighteenth century.

Some statistical considerations

Summary of Results for Plant-like names so far

Further advice for participants