Viewing post #269604 by dave

krancmm said:Cultivar: My understanding of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP, Cultivated Plant Code) is that there can be only one cultivar of a given plant.

This has been my assertion for some time, and originally the database only supported one cultivar field. But Zuzu prevailed upon me that Roses needed multiple cultivar names, (and this seems to be true, even if it violates the ICNCP) but I think you're right that those cases should have been able to be handled using your "Also sold as" field.

There appears to be a gap. I threw Alocasia x amazonica 'Polly' in common names - it shouldn't be there. But it shouldn't be in the synonym list either and it certainly doesn't belong as a separate plant. Nor is it a cultivar (the correct name 'Poly' can be traced back to a breeder and date).

In this case, 'Polly' is the field we care about. "Alocasia x amazonica" is the latin name and identifies what kind of plant it is. That value belongs either in the primary latin name fields or else in the synonym fields.

So I would say "Polly" by itself would belong as one of the "secondary" cultivar names as it stands today, and in the future would move into an "Also sold as" field.

What I propose is a new field "Also Sold As" directly under Trade Name that would allow multiple entries for the various wild and whacky names under which a plant might be sold. It would need to be searchable.

I think what might be better still is to do away with "Trade Name" altogether, and have a series of fields where you can enter one by one all the names by which the plant goes, including the trade name.