US Plant Patent PP4285
Cherry plum bush
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired March 25, 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
- PP4285
- Filed
- March 25, 1977
- Granted
- July 25, 1978
- Expires
- March 25, 1997
- Inventor
- MOLING LEROY I
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
A Cherry-Plum Plant characterized in being a bush, having rapid early growth with a spread substantially equal to height, having tough flexible stems and branches which bear a heavy fruit load without breaking, being very disease resistant and able to withstand severe cold weather without cover. The fruit is distinctive in having a small pit and small cavity, being substantially freestone, having relatively thick flesh almost free of astringency, being sweet in taste, having a smooth texture and being excellent for eating and canning and being very hardy. The fruit clings to the bush even when fully ripe in the face of strong winds.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
I claim: 1. I claim a new and distinctive variety of a Cherry-Plum Bush substantially as herein shown and described characterized particularly as to novelty by the unique combination of a relatively short widespread growth of a bush having tough flexible stems and branches, able to bear a heavy fruit load and having fruit buds approximately every 3/8 to 5/8 inch along all of the stems and branches and a cluster of buds at the base of each branch, being very disease and insect resistant and able to withstand frigid temperatures without cover and having a rapid growth producing a first crop in the growing season following grafting, the fruit being substantially freestone, having a small pit and cavity and having a relatively thick, sweet, smooth, textured fruit; the variety -- which resembles the "Sapalta" Cherry Plum -- being distinctively characterized, in comparison, by fruit which has thicker flesh, a smaller pit, and by being almost free of astringency.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4285 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.