I don't 'think' that S.l. 'Midnight' is the same as 'All Purple'. But you are correct, this does occur occastionally in the trade. It can be a confusing mess, sometimes, and it takes a lot of unraveling to get to the truth at times. I suspect it has to do with outright carelessness of producers as well as the fact that it is so difficult to keep up with patents.

To add to the confusion is that those pesky taxonimists change names of plants frequently, too. It's almost impossible for a plant producer to keep up with the newest changes and/or plant patents. Tony Avant does a very good job in discussing these issues....take a look at the attached site! Be sure to read the section on 'Trademark Myth' towards the bottom of the page.

Here is a link that might be useful: Information ala Tony Avant

A quote from the Tony Avant site listed above that I think answers the question of how mulitple names have come to be for the same plant cultivar:

"Nurserymen realized that patents expired in 20 years (formerly 17). After this time, anyone could legally propagate and sell a formerly patented cultivar. To further complicate matters, some plants are both patented (the only legal means to protect a new plant) and trademarked. Some nurserymen discovered that they could walk a tight rope around the spirit of the law and get the 20 year protection that the plant patent provides, plus a further measure of protection by trademarking a second name for each plant, which they would use to market to the public. Once the patent expired, others could propagate the plant, but could not sell it under the trademark name. A classic example is Monrovia's Limemound tm spirea. At the end of the patent period, everyone could propagate Spirea 'Monhub' PP5834, but they could not legally sell the plant as Limemound tm Spirea."

So it looks like it all boils down to the marketing tactics of large nurseries. Interesting. Sad, but interesting. It would be nice if plants could just be named the way the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants lays it out. But I guess that's too idealistic? Perhaps we will at least get legislation in this country that requires the Latin name be on the plant tag...

-Regina

Cannas are notoriously known for having multiple names for the same variety (ex. Minerva, Christ Light, Striped Beauty are all the same plant).

I think when there is no society to help regulate names in the nursery industry, folks seems to think it is alright to rename a plant that someone else produced.

Rebecca

Good thread, Regina!

I worked for several years in the seed industry, and there too, the naming of the very same seed under different cultivar names was a fact and a very real problem. I attended a convention one year where several experts in the field discussed this issue in a forum. They brought up the fact that a single grower might sell seed to several different distributing companies, and each of those companies might market the seed under a different trade name. They admitted the confusion and were trying to come up with some way to deal with the problem. Maybe it'll happen some day. If it's confusing to the experts, you know how confusing it is to us growers!

Dan Heims (Terra Nova) told me that Tradescantia x 'Sweet Kate' and T. x 'Blue and Gold' are exactly the same plant, introduced by two competing nurseries.

Perhaps 'Midnight' and 'All Purple' aren't the same, but there are several trade names for the purple calyx/purple flower form of S. leucantha, and most, if not all, reportedly trace back to the same deviant-from-the-species plant.

The nomenclature problem arises in several ways. Competing nurseries trying to distinguish their offerings by tacking their own cultivar name on a variety is one (e.g. the tradescantia above). Low-end mailorder outfits like Spring Hill and Burgess are also famous for renaming stuff willy-nilly, evidently thinking that their name choices will make the plants seem more appealing to their target market. And a newer and more nefarious one is nurseries renaming patented plants so as to not pay royalties. I haven't seen widespread evidence of this practice myself, but as more and more patented plants appear, the problem grows. It's reported in the trade mags as the folks who do it get busted.

Marty

And then there's the unholy mess that's been make with brugmansias in this country. Seems it's fairly easy to hybridize brugs by hand, so for a while there everyone and his brother was trying his hand at it. There was no system in place for registering a cultivar, and little or no understanding among most of the 'amateur' hybridizers out there of what made a plant 'nameworthy'---and everyone wants to name their 'baby'. So now there are tons of 'named' cultivars that are virtually identical, and many, many of them have NO records on how they were produced. Add to this that people have been trading seed-grown plants under the names of actual cultivars---and brugs do NOT 'come true' from seed---and cuttings from plants they 'think' is X or Y or Z, and the cuttings from THOSE plants get traded in all good faith as truly BEING X or Y or Z---

Makes me wanna pull my hair out!