US Plant Patent PP6674
Heritage chestnut
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired April 13, 2007. 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
- PP6674
- Filed
- April 13, 1987
- Granted
- March 14, 1989
- Expires
- April 13, 2007
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 tall, vigorous hybrid chestnut tree with very American chestnut-like characteristics, having a single, timber-form, upright, straight bole and a narrow branching habit, with large, elliptical and deeply dentate leaves and strongly scented flowers appearing in late spring after leafing out; the tree being a regular and light bearer of medium-sized, elongated, sweet nuts, the burrs splitting and many of the nuts falling free from the burr; the tree also exhibiting a high genetic resistance to the chestnut bark blight (Endothia parasitica), being a member of a group of hybrid chestnut trees that have not shown a single instance of infection in over 30 years of breeding and research, including passing inoculation tests without dying from infection, and the present variety itself not showing any instance of blight infection in 25 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, upright, straight-boled, timber type form with large, elliptical leaves with deeply dentate margins and late (post leaf appearance) flowering; the tree being a light, regular bearer of medium sized, elongated, sweet nuts in burrs that crack in late September and early October and release the crop easily; the trees being especially characterized by resembling the American chestnut in tree form, foliage and nut quality and a high genetic resistance to the chestnut bark blight.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP6674 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.