How to Use cross-pollinate in a Sentence

cross-pollinate

verb
  • For example, cross-pollinating a plum with an apricot produces a pluot, a hybrid fruit bred for its smooth skin and sweet, juicy flesh.
    — Sj McShane, Martha Stewart, 27 Feb. 2026
  • But then, the trees began cross-pollinating with other pear species, whose offspring create thorny thickets that smother native plants and habitat.
    — Erica Browne Grivas, Better Homes & Gardens, 15 Aug. 2025
  • Growing more than one blueberry bush allows the plants to cross-pollinate, resulting in bigger, juicier berries and larger harvests.
    — Karen Brewer Grossman, Southern Living, 23 June 2026
  • Hybrid fruit trees are created by cross-pollinating two different types of fruit trees to produce a new variety that combines traits from each parent tree.
    — Sj McShane, Martha Stewart, 27 Feb. 2026
  • It was later discovered that Callery pears could cross-pollinate with other trees in the wild, driving their meteoric spread, Zieche said.
    — Jerry Wu, Chicago Tribune, 11 May 2026
  • Many European plum varieties are self-fertile, while hardier American plums need to be cross-pollinated.
    — Lauren Landers, Better Homes & Gardens, 15 Jan. 2026
  • Additionally, fennel can cross-pollinate with other related plants, like dill, reducing the flavor and quality of seeds.
    — Lauren Landers, Better Homes & Gardens, 9 Apr. 2026
  • Unstructured time, whether reading, walking in nature, or simply thinking without an agenda, allows your brain to process, connect, and cross-pollinate ideas that constant motion won’t permit.
    — Julian Hayes Ii, Forbes.com, 22 May 2026
  • By cross-pollinating different groups of thinkers, Seth disturbs the pattern-completion machinery of each mind, clearing the ground for alternative insights to land.
    — Rachel Barr, Big Think, 29 Jan. 2026
  • And because now there are parts of it that are kind of cross-pollinating with this MAHA movement, and our show looks at this movement a lot, there’s going to be like a thousand people there.
    — Torie Bosch, STAT, 18 Apr. 2026
  • This tree is notorious for being highly invasive, often cross-pollinating with other pear varieties, resulting in dense, thorny thickets that disrupt local ecosystems.
    — Sj McShane, Martha Stewart, 29 Apr. 2026
  • Squash, Pumpkins, and Melons Squash, pumpkins, and other cucurbits such as zucchini potentially cross-pollinate if planted within half a mile to a mile of each other.
    — Lauren Landers, Better Homes & Gardens, 9 Sep. 2025
  • The chaotic sounds of fans streaming into Heysel Stadium cross-pollinates between the real and unreal footage, creating an enveloping atmosphere.
    — Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 14 Feb. 2026
  • Cities could cross-pollinate innovations, coordinate on policy, or bring joint enforcement cases against national corporations.
    — Terri Gerstein, New York Daily News, 13 Jan. 2026
  • In the 1990s, Dutch scientists began work to find older varieties of Brussels sprouts that were less bitter by cross-pollinating them with more modern, higher-yield ones to produce new plants with the best of both worlds.
    — Aaron Hutcherson, Washington Post, 10 Jan. 2026
  • Broken Spoke owner James White told the Statesman in 2018 that the show helped cross-pollinate the Spoke’s country clientele with Austin’s growing hippie culture.
    — Mars Salazar, Austin American Statesman, 27 Jan. 2026
  • NBCUniversal, like other Big Four network parent companies, is experimenting to find the optimal ways to cross-promote and cross-pollinate its biggest franchises across the NBC broadcast mothership and Peacock’s younger-skewing audience.
    — Cynthia Littleton, Variety, 24 Apr. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cross-pollinate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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