How to get a mystery plant named

The rules for cultivar naming are built around the assumption that the people who create and introduce plants to cultivation will always be the ones wanting to register names for them. In most groups of plants, that is the default situation. But it’s often not the case for tradescantias, because they are widely propagated and exchanged among hobbyists without detailed records or commercial interests.

As the ICRA for the Commelinaceae family, I have the role of registering and keeping track of names for all Commelinaceae cultivars in the world. I have to follow the rules to determine which names are correct and how to process them. But the rules also allow me some discretion to make decisions according to my judgment of what is useful and fair.

This article describes the steps I go through to get a cultivar properly registered, if it doesn’t have a name yet. The process is based on a combination of the explicit rules, and the approach I’ve devised based on experience and discussion with the ISHS (the organisation who make the official rules and appoint ICRAs).

If you come across a mystery cultivar in the Commelinaceae family, you can just contact me and ask me to figure it out. I’ll add it to my work queue and go through these steps, but it can take me a long time to do all the necessary research. So if you’re keen or impatient, you can do some of the research yourself and provide me with your findings and evidence, which will speed up the process a bit.

There are three steps to the flowchart:

1. Check whether it already has a name.
2. Get the originators to register it.
3. Get the community to register it.

1. Check whether it already has a name

If a cultivar already has a valid name, it can’t be given a new one. The point of the naming system is to make sure that each cultivar has a single correct and unique name, to allow for easy communication. So in general, if there’s an existing name in place it should stick.

A cultivar has a name if either:

1. Someone has already officially registered a name for the cultivar with the ICRA. Or,
2. Someone has published a description of the cultivar along with a name which is valid according to the rules, in a dated hardcopy document which is available to the public in some way (for example a book, article, or catalogue). Or,
3. The cultivar is more-or-less universally known by a name which is valid according to the rules, even if that name hasn’t been published in hardcopy yet.

If none of those conditions apply, then the cultivar is unnamed. A cultivar being unnamed is different from the species being unnamed or unknown – check out this article for more information on the different systems for naming plants. Here are some example situations where a cultivar is unnamed:

• It’s only ever labelled with a scientific species or variety name, like Callisia repens or Tradescantia zebrina var. zebrina.
• It’s only ever labelled with a common name for the species or group, like “spiderwort” or “chain plant”.
• It’s only ever labelled with vague descriptors like “the variegated one” or “Alex’s new breed” or “European form”.
• It’s only ever referred to by phrases relating to its lack of name, like “no ID” or “mystery plant”.
• It’s widely referred to by more than one different name, and none of them have been published in hardcopy.

There can be some grey areas in these criteria. For example, if an unofficial descriptor like “Alex’s new breed” becomes so widely used that it’s universally treated as an exact cultivar name, it might be best to accept that as the official name rather than giving it a new one. Similarly, if multiple names have been in use for a long time, it may be best to give one of them priority if it is clearly the oldest or most popular, rather than choosing something else. These are situations where I would use my discretion to decide what I think is best after considering all the evidence.

If you want to help me with this stage of the research, here are some pointers.

• Check the cultivar checklist to see if the plant is already there, perhaps under a different scientific classification than you expect.
• Look for information from a variety of different kinds of sources, like social media, websites, catalogues, books, and research papers.
• Remember that cultivar naming is a worldwide system, so you should try to search for sources from other countries and in other languages to the best of your ability.
• Remember that a published name can be valid no matter how old it is, so you should try to search for both modern and historic sources. Old plants can seem to disappear for decades, only to resurface and be considered “new” again.
• Search for pictures and descriptions that match the plant in question – don’t assume that it will be listed under the correct species or even the correct genus.

If it turns out the plant does have a valid name by one of the three criteria above, the flowchart ends here. If a cultivar is not in the checklist but you think it has a valid name, contact me with your evidence and I should be able to add it. I’m not omniscient, I only find out about new cultivars and new names if people tell me!

If you find a plant has no valid name, you could establish one by simply choosing it yourself and publishing it in hardcopy according to the rules. But I don’t recommend this approach, because it’s likely to be unpopular among people who have been growing the plant, as well as susceptible to being overriden by the originators. Instead I suggest following the rest of the steps below.

If there is a reasonable amount of evidence that the plant circulates with no name, or with multiple names, then it’s time to move on to the next part of the flow chart.

2. Get the originators to register it

The naming rules give the originator of a cultivar priority in choosing its name. It doesn’t matter what else we do to name a plant, if the originator later emerges and says they don’t like it then it has to be overriden. So the best way to get a cultivar stably and validly named is to invite the originator to register it themself.

“Originator” can mean different things, which have different levels of priority.

1. The first priority are the people who brought the cultivar into existence – either by germinating and raising a seed, or discovering and isolating a sport mutation on a plant specimen they were growing. If those people can’t or won’t register a name, then…
2. The next priority are the people who first introduced the plant into cultivation. This means they were the first to sell it, swap it, or share it with other people to grow intentionally. Remember this means the first people to introduce it anywhere in the world, and at any time in history – not bringing it to a different country or making it popular.

Of course, the originators can only be invited to register if we know who they are and how to contact them. And this is the part that can be difficult and time-consuming in the case of mystery plants that circulate with no information.

If you want to help me with this stage of the research, here are some suggestions.

• Ask the person who you got the plant from, where they got the plant from. Then contact that person and ask. Keep following the chain as far as it takes you. If the chain breaks, ask someone else who has the plant, and try again from a different start point.
• Use online and social media tools to search for information from before the year the plant became popular or widespread.
• Ask contacts in other countries or who speak other languages, particularly if that seems to be where the plant came from.
• Post publicly and honestly about the information you’re looking for, and ask other people to share the request on.
• Make it clear that the point of this process is simply to give credit to the people who introduced the plant, and that it has nothing to do with money or patents or trademarks.

If you manage to find the originators, direct them to the cultivar registration information or invite them to contact me. Hopefully, they will choose to register their cultivar and the flowchart will end here.

If the originators decline to register, or cannot be found or contacted despite evidence of trying as much as reasonably possible, then it’s time to move on to the next stage.

3. Get the community to register it

This is the final stage once all other possibilities have been exhausted. If the originators are unable or unwilling to register a name themselves, then I conduct a survey of the tradescantia grower community to choose a name. This is a fair way of allowing people to have collective ownership and credit for the name and the plant, rather than arbitrarily giving it to one person who didn’t create or introduce the cultivar. This isn’t laid out in the rules or required for ICRAs, but is the approach I’ve found most effective and fair.

First, I informally ask for suggestions in as many places as possible – social media, online communities, the mailing list, and so on. I invite people to submit their possible name ideas and I start compiling a list of options. If you’re trying to help get a particular plant named, you can provide your own suggestions and encourage others to do the same. I keep track of the people who submit each idea so I can credit them for their suggestion if it ends up being chosen. I eliminate any duplicates, reused names, and other suggestions that aren’t valid according to the naming rules.

Once I have a reasonable list of suggestions, I create a final survey. I provide photos and a description of the plant, and any information I have about its history or origins. And I invite people to vote for all the names they like, or to write in other suggestions. I try to add write-ins to the list of checkboxes in the early stages so that others can vote for them too. Then I share this survey as widely as possible – on all my social media, the mailing list, and in other groups and communities that I think might be relevant. If you’re trying to help get a particular plant named, you can share the survey yourself as widely as you like.

Once the survey ends, I choose the most popular valid name and register it officially on behalf of the community. Unless it was written in anonymously, I give credit to the person who first suggested the name in the registration.

Conclusions

The naming rules are complex and detailed, but they don’t cover every possible eventuality. Commelinaceae cultivation has some idiosyncrasies, which mean that mystery plants often circulate with no information about their origins. Those situations aren’t covered explicitly in the rules, so I have devised my own system for handling them fairly. I hope this article provides some transparency and predictability about what will happen in these cases.