North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["bluestem_farm@juno.com" <bluestem_farm@juno.com>]

-- "tanis cuff"  wrote:

I have a couple nice chance-seedling apples which I hope I'll share with 
enough people (and how many are "enough"?!) before I quit gardening in 4 or 
40 years.  But I'd like to learn what the more serious explorers & breeders 
have planned for preserving/continuing their work.



A related issue; I too have some lovely pippins that I'd like to share, but 
what concerns me is that they remain in the public domain.  How can one 
assure that some low life doesn't patent a particularly nice fruit, if it is 
new and nobody else has patented it?  It seems that what I read is full of 
contradictions.  The originator of the fruit is the only one allowed to 
patent.... but somebody brings a fruit to an ag. station in the 30s, they 
look at it for 50 years and then decide to introduce and patent it when the 
law allows them to do so.  There are other instances.   What are the rules, 
and is anyone enforcing them?
Muffy Barrett
Baraboo WI 
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