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The Patent Garden

US Plant Patent PP7064

Nectarine tree (Fire Diamond)

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired January 6, 2009. 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
PP7064
Filed
January 6, 1989
Granted
December 5, 1989
Expires
January 6, 2009

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

The present invention relates to a nectarine tree and more particularly to a new and distinct variety broadly characterized by a medium size, medium vigor, hardy, very productive and regular bearing tree. The fruit matures under the ecological conditions described approximately the second week in May, with first picking on May 10, 1988, making it a very early ripening variety. The fruit is uniform but small in size, semi-freestone in type, dark red in skin color, and a mild balance of acid and sugar in flavor. The variety was developed as a hybridized seedling from the selected seed parent, Early Diamond (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 5,438), and an unnamed genetically dwarf peach seedling as the selected pollen parent.

Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.

We claim: 1. A new and distinct very early ripening variety of semi-freestone nectarine tree, substantially as illustrated and described, which most nearly resembles the Early Diamond (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 5,438) nectarine variety by producing fruit that is good in flavor, globose in shape, and almost full red in color at harvest time, but is distinguished therefrom and an improvement thereon by harvesting 21 days earlier, making it one of the earliest ripening nectarines presently known, and is further distinguished from the Early Diamond by having purplish red blossoms instead of pink blossoms and by having mostly reddish brown leaves instead of green leaves from mid-summer to dormancy.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP7064 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.