US Plant Patent PP7041
Carolina chestnut
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired June 13, 2008. 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
- PP7041
- Filed
- June 13, 1988
- Granted
- September 26, 1989
- Expires
- June 13, 2008
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 large, vigorous hybrid chestnut tree, having an upright growth form with broadly spreading branches and a rounded crown, and abundant, lustrous foliage of large elliptical leaves with slightly dentate margins, and strongly scented flowers appearing in spring after leafing out; the tree being a regular and very prolific bearer of large, dark colored and very sweet, easy-to-peel nuts, the nuts ripening and falling free from the burr in mid September to the first of October; the tree also exhibiting a very high inherent resistance to the chestnut bark blight (Endothia parasitica), not showing a single instance of blight infection in 15 years of growth in the orchard.
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 hybrid chestnut tree, substantially as illustrated and described, which is of large size, vigorous in growth, upright in form with broadly spreading branches and a rounded crown, with abundant foliage and large, lustrous, elliptical leaves with slightly dentate margins and late flowering; the tree being a regular and prolific bearer of large, dark-colored and very sweet nuts that ripen and fall free from the burrs in early to late September; the trees being especially characterized by having the combination of good tree form and large, sweet and easy-to-peel nuts with a high genetic resistance to the chestnut bark blight that make it a valuable tree for both landscaping and commercial nut production of high quality chestnuts.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP7041 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.