MrKGDickie said:
I do have one thought: since this seems to be a continuing issue, is there any way someone (a person or organization with access to the information) could publish these commercial/trade names? You know...a "simple" list of patent name, commercial/trade name, and other names previously used, plus a pic? That way, there'd be a record of "which daylily was also called what" in the future. I know this is probably pie in the sky.
Hi Ken,
@MrKGDickie
I'm going to gingerly offer some thoughts and background on this.
It would certainly be valuable if a complete list of all names used for daylilies, registered, unregistered, trademarked, etc., could be kept.
But, I don't think it's possible to have a complete one. Who could find out all the "garden names" being used by gardeners for their "No-ID" ones and by backyard hybridizers? Pretty impossible.
Those aren't the most problematic though. The main problem cases are the commercial mass-marketed ones. As with 'Carefree Peach' that
@Edgar posted. That one doesn't seem to be trademarked. I can't find any information on its origin. So it could be put on the list but there wouldn't be much information, although a picture and description would be useful, and catalogs which offered it might be cited.
There would be challenges with trademarked names. As Sue
@sooby pointed out, the growers might use different names in different countries. It certainly would make sense to use an attractive name in the local language. Keeping track of all those would take research and diligence. That shouldn't happen with registered names because translating them is no longer permitted. It must be odd to see 'Octomom' followed by a description in Arabic.
Who would be willing to create and maintain the list?
It was originally expected that each International Cultivar Registration Authority would maintain a complete checklist of all cultivar names in their appointed taxon (a genus, usually). [ISHS maintains lists for ones with no ICRA].
To be clear: A checklist of cultivar names has only one primary purpose: To avoid names being duplicated, creating confusion, by providing a ready reference of ones already used.
This was do-able in the early days of daylily hybridizing. There were so few when Dr. Arlow B. Stout published "Daylilies: The Wild Species and Garden Clones, Both Old and New, of the Genus Hemerocallis" in 1934, the title almost was long enough to cover them
He not only was able to list all the names but full descriptions and his personal observations (some uncomplimentary) because he grew every one he could collect.
When the American Hemerocallis Society was appointed the official ICRA for Hemerocallis in (? - about 1955), there were hundreds, maybe thousands. I don't have the data handy.
There would have been a huge amount of catching-up to do, but they had help. The American Plant Life Society had just finished a massive all-volunteer effort to produce "The Descriptive Catalog of Hemerocallis Clones, 1893-1948". In order to make it practicable because there were so many, the descriptions were reduced to terse abbreviations.
At first, the Registrar position for AHS was also voluntary. That soon proved laughably hopeless and AHS made it a paid position, as it has been since.
In order to cover costs for salaries, processing, printing ,etc., ICRAs are allowed to charge reasonable registration and checklist fees. But it is not supposed to be a fund raising activity to support an organization.
AHS began charging a fee for each registration. It also required a printed list or catalog to be submitted, and an official form to be filled out. This was all permissible per ISHS, as was the eventual additional requirement of an image.
Sometime in the 1970's AHS hiked its fee by an amount some hybridizers found unacceptable. They rebelled by declining to register their cultivars. AHS countered by making unregistered cultivars ineligible for its awards, including exhibition awards in accredited shows. Some hybridizers shrugged.
Because AHS was still responsible for tracking all names, it created a designation "Recognized" which was noted in the checklists with the cultivar name, hybridizer's name, and date it was published. Sometime later it stopped doing so, and it was dropped.
This was partly due to protests by other hybridizers who complained that the "recognized" ones were "free" names while they were paying for theirs. This showed a lack of understanding of what it takes for a cultivar name to be valid. It doesn't have to be registered with the ICRA. That's only a precaution to protect it. Still, the protests prevailed.
But if you look in the AHS database you'll see, e.g., 'Jade Star' (Moldovan, 1978) ... Rec. Name only." No description. This daylily is not eligible to be entered in AHS shows, but I've seen it. Classification and judges have not been trained about "Rec.".
Eventually AHS gave up trying to track all names. It is overwhelmed processing the massive numbers of official registrations coming in. It has plenty of other complaints and protests and supplications to attend, and much of dealing with those is done by volunteers.
Thank you, under-appreciated and much-maligned Registration Committee! Except, of course, for the one or two quibbles of mine I'd like attended to! Lol.
Pat
