North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[John S <swim_at_svc@yahoo.com>]

From a consumer point of view, I am utterly opposed to mis-naming a variety just to achieve better sales.  If I can digress a bit to give a concrete example?  About 10-15 years back, a local roadside market introduced supersweet corns (sh2) to the area and pushed them for several years trying to develop a market.  They succeeded with me and garnered my repeat business just because I knew that they were trying to offer better varieties.  Unfortunately that success was observed by competitors who started to advertise their corn as "super sweet" using it as a descriptive term and completely muddled the market.  The result was the original market stopped offering as much of the sh2's since the seed is more challenging and can be more expensive and the customer base could not tell where to go to get the good stuff and so now we all get more inferior corn.  A similar but opposite situation exists with Silver Queen, which has had long term recognition.  However, all the local markets now grow Silver King or similar varieities and now label them Silver Queen.

 

When you deceive your market for short term gains, you poison the market long term.  Granted the majority of your customers may not make the effort or care to learn the true names of what they are buying, but there is alway that percentage that does care.

 

From what I see with OGW's catalogs over the years, they aggressively search for new varieities by exploring/importing from around the world.  Trademarking an american name for a varieity otherwise unknown here does not seem much of a problem to me.

MARIE ASHTON <bwoodtx@verizon.net> wrote:

Changing a name is becoming a trend by a number of large nurseries. The create a trademark name that belongs to them so that no one else can use the name. They still have to let you know the real cultivar name if you ask. Stark Bros. has done this with several varieties of stone fruit. There are a number of other nurseries, also, that have created a new trademarked name for an existing variety.

 

An interesting example is One Green World has created several trademark names for new Jujube varieties they imported from China. Who would like to call a variety - Mango Dong Zho - well that is the true name of the variety of jujube that they created a new trademark name of Winter Delight for; and in that case I believe that the new name fits American tastes better. And that is what the translation from Chinese basically means, anyway.

 

Now, in the case of a large California nursery that procured plant material from the USDA and then changed the name from what the USDA name was, that is not too good. To make matters worse the variety they trademarked a new name for was not very vigorous and did not grow out well, so the second year they changed the variety and left the new name the same. If someone bought the variety the first year and ordered another the second year they did not get the same variety even though the name was the same.

 

So, I stand on the side that it is not very good to change a name unless it is an imported variety with an unpronounceable name in another language or it has a terrible name even though it may be a good variety.

 

Regards,

Richard Ashton

Oak Creek Orchard

www.oakcreekorchard.com

bwoodtx@verizon.net

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Richard MURPHY

To: North American Fruit Explorers

Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 3:34 PM

Subject: Re: [NAFEX] keepsake name

Stark Brothers has a "Starking Delicious" Pear.

It's pretty decent.

It's real name is Maxine.

Yup; they took a Maxine and called it a "Starking Delicious"

I actually called them and confirmed this before buying 10 of them.

'Maxine' sounds like a large, old, dumb woman.

 

So, sometimes you actually CAN put lipstick on the pig.

It's too bad some folks make dumb assumptions like, name = quality, but it happens all the time. "Hot Dog" is a tidy little name. Would you eat it if it was named of it's contents? Hell no.

 

Murph

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Naomi

To: 'North American Fruit Explorers'

Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 10:59 AM

Subject: Re: [NAFEX] keepsake name

In the not too distant past I was chastised on a cheese making list for referring to a cheese I was making as Brie.  I was informed by another member that the cheese names referred to the production of certain locations, species… and were not to be used for “like products” .  She then informed me of the names she had chosen for her products which involved names drawn from local landmarks.

 

 I was “persuaded” to follow her example and promptly dubbed my next cheese  “Clay Peak Sanitary Landfill and Motorcycle Park” .  It was actually a rather nice feta.

 

BTW I have a Keepsake tree and very much enjoy the fruit.

Naomi 

 

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