In sexually reproducing animals, primordial germ cells (PGCs) are often set aside early in embryogenesis, a strategy which minimizes the risk of genomic damage associated with replication and mitosis during the cell cycle. Here, we have used germ line markers (piwi, vasa and nanos) and micro-injected cell lineage tracers to show that PGC specification in the leech genus Helobdella follows a different scenario: in this hermaphrodite, the male and female PGCs segregate from somatic lineages only after more than 20 rounds of zygotic mitosis; the male and female PGCs share the same (mesodermal) cell lineage for 19 rounds of zygotic mitosis. Moreover, while all three markers are expressed in both male and female reproductive tissues of the adult, they are expressed differentially between the male and female PGCs of the developing embryo: piwi and vasa are expressed preferentially in female PGCs at a time when nanos is expressed preferentially in male PGCs. A priori, the delayed segregation of male and female PGCs from somatic tissues and from one another increases the probability of mutations affecting both male and female PGCs of a given individual. We speculate that this suite of features, combined with a capacity for selffertilization, may contribute to the dramatically rearranged genome of Helobdella robusta relative to various other animals.