Poinsettia plant

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired March 7, 1995. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on March 24, 1997, but this patent ends 748 days earlier — a terminal disclaimer gives term back. A source that calculates twenty years from filing would tell you this plant is still protected when it is already free.

The record

Patent number

PP4219

Filed

March 24, 1977

Granted

March 7, 1978

Expires

March 7, 1995

Assignee

MIKKELSENS INC

Inventor

HREBENINK ALEXANDER

No cultivar name of record

This patent does not name the plant, and for its era that is ordinary rather than an omission. Before about 1980, breeders frequently patented a plant without giving it a cultivar name at all — the grant identified it by its number, its parentage and a written description of the flower and foliage. Most plant patents from the 1930s to the 1970s have no name in them.

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 poinsettia plant having upright growth with vigorous self branching in all seasons, from the base to the terminal tip of the plant. There is complete flowering of each shoot, and uniform flowering response from bottom to top. The cultivar has excellent keeping qualities, cream white bract color, and fast and uniform rooting from an abundance of cuttings from each plant. The self branching is initiated at fully developed nodes 4"-5" above the soil line in 4" pots, with 6 to 8 mature leaves, and this is believed to be an unique characteristic.

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 poinsettia plant characterized particularly as to novelty by the combined characteristics of upright growth with vigorous self branching in all seasons, from the base to the terminal tip of the plant, and the complete flowering of each shoot; uniform flowering response from bottom to top; excellent keeping qualities; cream white bract color; fast and uniform rooting from an abundance of cuttings from each plant; self branching initiated at fully developed nodes 4"-5" above the soil line in 4" pots, with six to eight mature leaves, a unique characteristic, and the characteristic of controlling top growth and side bracts by properly managing side growth and primary foliage.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4219 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.