Bev maybe it could be your pre-Paris trip! haha
Yan that is a nice offer...personally not able to do that I will look at the photos and drool though! Thanks

Lynn, Peter, @jungleShadows what's involved in getting a semp named? I've been wondering this and seems a good place to ask.
What "body" regulates the names of semps? (or other plants for that matter? Is it groups of enthusiasts who want to maintain accurate naming? and parental info. or is there a world name database??) Does someone get a type of patent for their plant?
Thanks in advance for info

Hi Greg;

interesting questions

it's me and my semps-friends in germany who starts to collect all informations about every named semps all over the world; the actual result you can find in our dictionary/homepage;

we find out that there is no official institution who cares about it;

any hobby-semps-breeder may give his seedlings names....

but then you will have thousands of cultivars with different appearence but the same names;

so we start to check every new upcoming cultivar-name and find out if there is a serious source/breeder behind it; only if you can compare your new seedlings with a great stock of collected named cultivars it is serious to give names to it....that is what we think;

if we can't find the origin and the appearance is common we won't add it to our database because there are enough known cultivars with the same appearance;

when a "normal" semps-collecteur starts breeding and there is a very nice one he wants to name.....then a stage like this on ATP or our forum might be the right place to show it....after some years of observance and own comparison;

then a lot of experienced semps-fans may discuss to name it or not;

I believe that is the way it has been done in the US also Peter.
Maybe @JungleShadows can give us more information on this. I do believe he addressed some of this at the Hybridizing Clinic this spring.
You can watch the clinic videos using this link: http://garden.org/thread/view_...

I have split this topic into it's own thread. Let us keep this thread for discussion only on how new Sempervivum are named.

very good idea

Great question, Greg!!

Thanks, Peter, for the interesting explanation!

Lynn, so happy this has its own thread. Such a fascinating topic.

I had no idea that it was so random! No wonder there can be so many with names no one has ever heard of before! I knew that it was like this in the past, but I thought things had changed somehow.
Peter does your German group just go by photos or do hybridizers send you semps so you can see/compare for unusualness on your own??

Greg, many of the named ones we can't find reference for are ones that some one else has given a new name for. There are a couple of online nurseries doing it.

Oh that's not good! I thought it was just someone's new hybrid, didn't realize they're just taking another semp and renaming it!

They loose tags, or get them mixed up. The nurseries that are doing that don't care about the names, just the sales.
The good nurseries make the correction, because it can happen to any and all.

That's not good. So much work went into getting the names right. Maybe we should start a Sempervivum society. Then we could have fun meetings 3 or 4 times a year, have interesting speakers and auction plants!!!! The Iris, daylily and rose people all have them.. We could be the first district!!!

in germany the biggest activ breeders (Erwin Geiger/Volkmar Schara/Martin Haberer/Horst Diehm) present their new cultivars with photos and description; on our homepage we mostly show them in a news - so the semps-fans can see them before buying;

the older cultivars we try to get from the breeder directly or from someone who get it from the breeder; so we can compare with all the stuff around in the collections; or we ask the breeder to take a look at our photos to confirm or disagree;

a society seems good; but no breeder is obligated to do what that society wants to.....there is no law to rely on;

we only can appeal to all that breeders and nurseries.....and ignore all that stuff we can't ascertain;

a lot of semps-fans take a look at our homepage before they order new cultivars
they try to find this ones we've never seen before from serious sources; step by step the gaps at older cultivars were closed;

and when they find new names they inform us - so we can make previous researches; so we find some unknown cultivars from known breeders; f.e. there is a cultivar like 'Squib' we discovered some time ago without informations about the breeder - after a lot of researches we found out that Howard J. Wills has introduced it;

We have been sorting through some plants here Peter, finding that they are incorrectly named. When this happens we notify the members here so they can make corrections in their collections.
We already have several that have become NOIDs in our collections.

it seems to be the only way to keep the collections clean and proper

we tried to inform the nurseries too - but they are mostly not really interested in such informations

SMG, Perennial Obsessions Northhills Nursery and Youngs Garden Center are great at making corrections if they come up.

that is very commendable;

Hi guys,

Years ago the Sempervivum Society was given the duty as International Registrar for Sempervivum and Jovibarba. Peter Mitchell contacted me and we went over a list of Sempervivum and Jovibarba cultivars then in cultivation in the US (many had not reached Europe) and he came out with a list of the then known cultivars from both sides of the Atlantic. This was published in the early '80's but of course since then we have had 4X that many cultivars introduced to the market as were on this original list. With the demise of the Sempervivum Society there is no international board for just Sempervivum.

So now we sort of resort to the "old rules", that a plant was "officially introduced" when it appeared in a printed list (or in the electronic world) offered for sale in a web site. The other option is to have the name published in an article in a publication. Either forms of publication can establish a cultivar name in the absence of a body to do so.

Naming plants for deceased people does not require permission but you should always request the permission of living people to have a plant named for them. So, the plants I named 'Polly Bishop' and 'Helen Payne' both deceased can be named but naming one 'Lynn Smith' would require her permission.

The names for my other new cultivars were ones I thought others would not use so the chances for confusion would be minimal. I do not think naming a Jovibarba and Sempervivum with the same cultivar name is a good idea. Too many chances for confusion even though it is legitimate under the present rules. For one, the two genera CAN cross, although not easily. Of course some authorities lump them in a single genus.

Opinions??

Kevin

JungleShadows said:
So now we sort of resort to the "old rules", that a plant was "officially introduced" when it appeared in a printed list (or in the electronic world) offered for sale in a web site. The other option is to have the name published in an article in a publication. Either forms of publication can establish a cultivar name in the absence of a body to do so.

whatever we think about the right way...there are breeders and collecters in eastern europe, japan and china...would they agree and follow that rules?

till there is no consistence worldwide rule I just continue collecting and verifying informations, asking everybody I know and consolidate it on our homepage....

Peter,

I agree that there are people who don't follow the rules and there is no real way to enforce anything. Of course the people in the know realize that there are ethical and unethical breeders.

In this country, our major problem is this "farm" in Ohio that produces millions of seedlings which they sell indiscriminately through the big box stores here. This is where our "unknown noids" often originate. The sad thing is that it wouldn't take much more effort to propagate some of the better cultivars and sell them.

Maybe this all speaks to again forming a Sempervivum society of some sort so that we could have somebody keeping track of the names. The problem with both the Sempervivum Society and the Sempervivum Fanciers Association was that there was essentially one person running and doing everything for both groups. When they stopped, so did these societies. For a society you need officers and a board.

OK opinions on that!!

Kevin