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The Patent Garden

US Plant Patent PP6383

Crape myrtle

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired November 8, 2005. 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
PP6383
Filed
September 20, 1985
Granted
November 8, 1988
Expires
November 8, 2005
Inventor
WHITCOMB CARL E

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 crape myrtle with a vigorous upright growth habit having up to 5 major stems and little if any secondary suckering at the base, large inflorescenses of wine-red flowers which discolor very little with age, and dark green leathery leaves that turn red-orange in the fall.

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 Lagerstroemia indica plant substantially as shown and described and particularly characterized by a vigorous upright growth habit, a plurality of major stems and little if any secondary suckering at the base, large inflorescenses of wine-red flower, Spiraea red #0-25, and dark green leathery leaves that turn red-orange in the fall.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP6383 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.