Have a selection of Hamelia patens. It's common name is Compact Texas Firebush. The actual selection description is: Lynn Lowrey Collection at SFA Mast Arboretum. There's no cultivar or trade name associated with it.

How would this be entered?

Thanks.

Monica, you are always pushing the limits of what this system can support, and I am glad for it because it gives us new perspectives on how the database should be designed.

I don't know about this plant in particular, but it sounds like a new selection or variety that has not yet been registered as a cultivar. The bigger question for us is, I think, if we want such a plant in the database. If so, then I think we should use the cultivar field for this purpose, and the plant can be edited later if they ever change the cultivar to a registered name.

If you have other ideas, I'd love to hear them.

The plant is part of Magnolia Gardens (wholesaler/grower) Plants For Texas® program, plants that do well all over Texas. I've had it at least 5 years and it's never received a cultivar name. And it certainly isn't a new selection as Mr Lowrey died in 1997 and collected it probably in the 70s-80s.

Another Lowrey collected plant at the arboretum, a dwarf Scutellaria suffrutescens, is sold by Magnolia gardens as common name Pink Texas Skullcap, but was given an unregistered working name as 'Texas Rose' and is sold by Plant Delights as such.

Both Yucca Do and Plant Delights sell selections collected in the wild without giving them cultivar names. For instance, I had Trismeria trifoliata Collection #A1AG-103.

If these plants are sold by local and online retailers across chunks of the country, why wouldn't they be in the database?!

Here's a possibility for working with these plants following how the Rose Rustlers handle unidentified roses. Now the system automatically adds the single apostophes to cultivar names. If someone entered a plant in the cultivar field with double quotes, could the system just leave it that way?

I'd enter Hamelia patens "Lynn Lowrey Selection at SFA Mast Arboretum", Common Name: Compact Texas Firebush. It would show up in the header with the double quotes.

Is that feasible?

That's possible, but I think the better direction to take is to find out the right long-term solution that fits perfectly with what we're trying to do.

We have in the past been floating the idea of a "Sold as" field and I think this is a situation where such a field would be needed, don't you think?

Since the "Sold As" field was my idea, why didn't I think of that?! Glad you remembered...yes, that would work.

That's pretty much my next thing to dig into. Once the latin names issue is all settled and finished.

Waiting patiently for Cultivar and Sold As discussions to begin.