US Plant Patent PP4926
Apple tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired February 9, 2001. 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
- PP4926
- Filed
- February 9, 1981
- Granted
- November 9, 1982
- Expires
- February 9, 2001
- Inventor
- COKE STEPHEN M; SMITH LEON I
No cultivar name of record
This patent does not name the plant. Through the 1980s and early 1990s that was still common: naming every new cultivar only became standard practice as plants began to be marketed under brand names. The grant identifies this one by its number and by a written description instead.
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
A variety of apple of the Delicious strain which has dwarf characteristics, with wide angle branching, blooming as much as two weeks later than the "Starking" (unpatented variety), producing small, sweet, red apples similar to "Starking", and providing a root stock which supports ready grafting of pears for growing same to eliminate pear decline and other disorders of pear rootstocks to which this rootstock is not susceptible.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
We claim: 1. A new and distinct variety of apple tree, substantially as herein shown and described, characterized particularly as to novelty by the unique combination of a dwarf resemblance to "Starking" (unpatented) Delicious, the fruit being similarly dwarf on the order of a crab apple, though having coloring resembling "Starking", the wide angle branching habit the first year as opposed to the usual mostly leafy growth of most apple varieties, late blooming, as much as sixteen days later than Rose Red, Jonathan and other similar varieties, and the very suitable use as a clonal rootstock for other apple varieties and also many pear varieties which when grown on usual pear rootstock are susceptible to pear decline and other pear disorders, to which the apple rootstock of this variety is not susceptible.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4926 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.