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

PP4221

Filed

March 24, 1977

Granted

March 7, 1978

Expires

March 7, 1995

Assignee

MIKKELSENS INC

Inventor

HREBENIUK 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 cultivar which appears to be a tetraploid due to its heavy thick leaves, stiff thick stems and the appearance of the cyathias. The bract color is deep, bright red, and the cultivar is also characterized by fast rooting, excellent cutting production, self branching habit, and long lasting bracts and foliage.

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 particularly characterized as to novelty by the combined characteristics of heavy thick leaves, stiff thick stems and appearance of cyathias all of which tend to indicate that the cultivar is a tetraploid; self branching from the base of the stem without removal of terminal tips; deep, bright red bract color; fast rooting in both summer and winter and excellent cutting production; long lasting bracts and foliage, and relatively large total bract head.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4221 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.