US Plant Patent PP4378
Almond tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired October 11, 1997. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
No term adjustment or disclaimer is recorded against this patent, so this is the full statutory term — twenty years from the filing date.
The record
- Patent number
- PP4378
- Filed
- October 11, 1977
- Granted
- February 13, 1979
- Expires
- October 11, 1997
- Assignee
- BELL ELBERTA F, BELL JAMES C
- Inventor
- BELL JAMES C
No cultivar name of record
This patent does not name the plant, and for its era that is ordinary rather than an omission. Before about 1980, breeders frequently patented a plant without giving it a cultivar name at all — the grant identified it by its number, its parentage and a written description of the flower and foliage. Most plant patents from the 1930s to the 1970s have no name in them.
Nothing here is missing from our records: the patent itself states no name. Where one exists we show it, and we do not invent one.
Abstract
An almond tree which is dense, medium size, vigorous, spreading in branching habit, abundantly foliated with medium size, medium green, acuminate leaves having a crenate margin, blooms early with pink flowers, and is a regular and heavy producer--in clusters on short spurs--of large, elongated, paper shell, well-sealed nuts which hang well on tree and have a medium harvest period and a relatively high percentage of kernel to nut.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
I claim: 1. A new and distinct variety of almond tree, substantially as illustrated and described, which is dense, medium size, vigorous, spreading in branching habit, abundantly foliated with medium size, medium green, acuminate leaves having a crenate margin, blooms early with pink flowers, and is a regular and heavy producer--in clusters on short spurs--of large, elongated, paper shell, well-sealed nuts which hang well on tree, and have a medium harvest period and a relatively high percentage of kernel to nut; the present variety, in particular comparison to the Ne Plus Ultra, being characterized by a branching habit which, while essentially spreading, is more upright and easier to knock at harvest, by thicker foliage, by pink bloom rather than white bloom, by an apparent immunity to brown rot, and by nuts easier to hull and having a softer shell; the present variety being in bloom four or five days before the Nonpareil and in harvest with the Ne Plus Ultra.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4378 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.