Skip to content
The Patent Garden

US Plant Patent PP8902

Ficus benjamina plant named Francis

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired September 14, 2013. 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
PP8902
Filed
September 14, 1993
Granted
September 20, 1994
Expires
September 14, 2013
Inventor
DENIS RENE G M A

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 new cultivar of Ficus benjamina named `Francis`, characterized by its unique leaf variegation, which includes dark green irregular markings along and radiating from the midrib, and a fresh white-yellow-light green variegation elsewhere, with the variegated markings maturing to a light to medium green which is always lighter than the dark green markings around the midrib, which comprise 30 to 50% of the leaf surface.

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 cultivar of Ficus benjamina named `Francis`, as illustrated and described.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP8902 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.