Cultivar Check Lists for Ornamental Plants - Claude E. Phillips ...

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change. Is your 'Black Magic' iris correctly identified, or is it really 'Eleanore Roosevelt'?
Have you purchased Rosa damascena 'Trigintipetala' because of its anticipated fragrance and
light pink flowers and received instead a hybrid with no damask rose genes, dark pink flowers,
and little fragrance? If you have encountered these and similar problems, you can join
thousands of other gardeners.
The solution for the correct identification of cultivars, even for the so-called "experts," is
consultation with cultivar checklists and ultimately period descriptions. This brings up another
problem: who has published checklists of your favorite plant group?
This list originated in an attempt to locate pre-1900 cultivars of ornamentals for
historical restoration work and to verify them by cumulative checklists (Kunst and Tucker,
1989). This goal was expanded in an attempt to locate all cultivar checklists for ornamental
plants. Since these lists are often scattered and sometimes difficult to locate, the compilers
make no claim that the list is complete. In the following, we have listed some historical
checklists but have concentrated on the most recent, updated, cumulative ones.
Since the ideal of providing coloured illustrations in checklists is rarely achieved,
especially in the older literature, this list also includes a number of taxonomic and other
botanical and horticultural revisions where cultivars are described and illustrated. For this
reason, we have also included botanical and horticultural revisions when cultivars are described
and illustrated. Good general references to extant cultivars are Harkness and D'Angelo (1986)
and Hatch (1986). The Wisley Trials in the Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Horticultural
Society are recommended for cultivar descriptions, while Commissie voor de
Wetenschappelijke Benaming van Cultuurgewassen (1948), Kelsey and Dayton (1942), and
Wright (1984) also discuss many cultivars. The Boskoop award winners are discussed in
Tromp (1986).
Besides numerous cultivar names in the "Cultivar & Germplasm Releases" section,
HortScience has become the vehicle for publication of cultivar names for unassigned woody
plant genera (Clemants, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998; Huttleston, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991,
1992, 1993; Spongberg, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994a, 1995, 1996; Tebbitt, 1999;
Vrugtman, 1994a), genera at the Arnold Arboretum (Spongberg, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992,
1993, 1994a, 1995, 1996, 1997), Kalmia, (Jaynes, 1989), and Syringa, (Vrugtman, 1988, 1991,
1992, 1993, 1994b, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999). Listings of other cultivar names are supposed to
be maintained by International Cultivar Registration Authorities (American Association of
Nurserymen, c. 1987; Leslie, 1986, 1995; Schneider, 1986a; Vrugtman, 1972, 1973, 1977,
1981, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1989c, 1990b, 1990d, 1995), which is currently maintained as the
Directory of International Cultivar Registration Authorities (http://www.ishs.org/sci/icra.htm).
The work of these designated authorities is further supplemented by cumulative checklists and
origination lists maintained and published by specialist societies.
The same Web site (http://www.ishs.org/sci/icra.htm) contains an introduction by the
Chairman of the ISHS Commission on Registration and Nomenclature and covers a variety of
topics including: What are ICRAs, Guidance notes for ICRAs, Applying to be an ICRA, the
Botanical Code, the Cultivated Plant Code, the ISHS Commission on Registration and
Nomenclature, the Directory of ICRAs, the Directory of families, genera & species with ICRAs,
and How to name a new cultivar.
The rules for naming cultivars are covered by Brickell (1980), Greuter (1988), and
Trehane et al. (1995). The American Association of Nurserymen (c. 1987) and Allan (1988)
have published guides for the public.
A recent problem that may confuse efforts to stabilize cultivar names is the use of
trademarks in place of cultivar names. The statement by the AAN that "under Federal law,