JamesT said:
The AHS database has too many instances of pedigrees which were arbitrarily shortened for publication, presumably by the registrar, which makes me wonder just what the registration process is supposed to accomplish. Is its purpose to classify and record the history of the daylily's evolution? Or, is it simply a way to extract a fee for the privilege of participating in the daylily marketing game?
It's hard to say what drives the registration system. For instance, there have been rules in place for several years stipulating that a picture be submitted as part of the registration process, yet somehow there are still many entries which lack an image. Is this because the AHS is more interested in the $25 than the system which they have set up?
The purpose of the registration system is to record cultivar names and avoid duplication thereof, otherwise there'd be more than one daylily being distributed with the same name more often than there currently is. AHS was appointed the International Cultivar Registration Authority for Hemerocallis and has to follow the ICNCP (International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants).
AHS is responsible for making sure that cultivar names are validly published (this has always had to be in printed paper form but I believe that may change in the future) and acceptably distributed. The registration form has space for the pod parent and pollen parent but this can be used to go back generations to a certain extent if some of the plants are unregistered as shown in Maurice's example above. When the pod and pollen parents are registered there is no need to go back any further because anyone can look up their parentage if the hybridizer gave it.
It wasn't all that long ago that images started to be required for registration and AHS is trying to obtain as many images for daylilies registered before that time as possible.
