US Plant Patent PP5560
Nandina domestica Thunb. called Lowboy
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired November 18, 2003. 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
- PP5560
- Filed
- November 18, 1983
- Granted
- September 24, 1985
- Expires
- November 18, 2003
- Inventor
- RUSHING RALPH C
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 variety of Nandina domestica Thunb. distinguished by a new and improved combination of characteristics never previously exhibited in a heavenly bamboo of new leaves of a rich bronze that change to a metallic bluish green at maturity and in winter develop a uniform reddish purple tint, densely branched, mounded spreading habit and stoloniferous growth, ranging in size from two to three feet in height and two and one half to four feet wide.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
I claim: 1. A new and unique variety of heavenly bamboo or Nandina as herein shown and described, characterized by its dense broad-mounded growth habit, stoloniferous nature, bronze to metallic bluish green to reddish purple winter color foliage, creamy white flowers, bright red fruit, adaptability to extreme soil and cultural conditions, the leaves, flowers and fruit being about one-third to one-half the mature size of those for the typical species Nandina; rooted cuttings or divisions will fill a one-gallon container in two seasons, the dense, compact, mounded growth habit will fill numerous landscape needs for missing low-hedging groupings and foundation plantings, requiring less maintenance, especially pruning, than the species; and freedom from disease and insects with wide soil tolerance.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP5560 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.