The complicated language of trademark names
Language is our primary tool of communication and our foundation for understanding one another. In the green industry, I think it’s fair to say that we speak a common language: the language of plants. Whether you’re a retailer, grower, landscaper, or designer, identifying plants by their botanical names has probably become second nature to you by now. You don’t need to be in this industry for long to recognize the importance of using scientific names; it only takes one misunderstanding to realize why common names are so problematic. They can sometimes imply that taxonomic relationships exist between plants that are completely unrelated. Take Western Red Cedar and Eastern Red Cedar for example. Neither of these plants, Thuja plicata or Juniperus virginiana, is a true cedar. To further complicate things, the same common name can be associated with two completely different plants, not to mention that a single plant is often known by multiple common names.
The beauty of the taxonomic system of botanical nomenclature is that we use it to assign one unique name to each and every species, sub-species, and variety of plant. So, as long as we stick with scientific names, there can be no confusion, right? Well, not exactly. For the past few decades, the overuse of nonsensical cultivar names has created a lot of confusion for growers, landscape professionals, and homeowners alike.
The use of plant patents and trademarks in the horticulture industry has become increasingly prevalent as a way to incentivize breeders to continue developing new plant varieties, as well as protect their investments. These protections are undoubtedly important; they incentivize innovation in plant genetics and lead to new and exciting introductions to the market that improve upon industry standards. But for those of us who grow, sell, and install plants, this also means that we are seeing a lot less plants with names like Coreopsis ‘Moonbeam’ and Aronia ‘Autumn Magic’, and a lot more names like Coreopsis ‘Baluptogonz’ PP28882 and Aronia ‘SMNAMPEM’ PPAF.
Since plant patents only last for 20 years, anyone can propagate a formerly patented cultivar after that time period. But trademark names can be protected indefinitely as long as they are renewed every ten years and remain valid. This has led to what is now common practice in the plant breeding industry: breeders patent a plant with a nonsensical cultivar name, but create a catchy, memorable trademark name for their new introduction. As long as they effectively market their trademark name, they can continue to exclusively promote and sell the plant under that trademark name after their patent expires. No one will recognize the name Weigela ‘Bokraspiwi’ when the patent expires, for example, but they will remember Spilled Wine®.
I think we all want to see breeders and hybridizers fairly compensated for their time and investments and fairly recognized for the passion they put into developing new plants for our industry. We all get excited about new plants and we all benefit from improved genetics; these new introductions allow us phase out older, problematic varieties with newer, more disease- resistant plants that often have better flowering and improved form. But I think most of us are also dedicated to making gardening more accessible to our end customers. Our industry spends millions of dollars producing advertising and marketing content aimed at simplifying the gardening process in order to attract and retain our next generation of consumers, many of whom have little to no previous experience. But, at the same time, it seems that the current naming trends are doing us all a disservice by making the language of our industry intentionally confusing and semi-deceitful. Even the process of designing our plant catalog is becoming more of a challenge each year as we struggle to create a format that allows us to display information in the most clear and concise way possible, while also adhering to the proper usage of trademarked plant names. I think we would all benefit from redirecting our naming trends in a new direction: one that both protects the integrity of breeders’ intellectual property and preserves the clarity and simplicity that our botanical naming system was meant to provide.
