So here is the big question, what tree is this? Here is a photo of my Geisha planted in the garden but as you can see there is new growth off the bottom which has a funny resemblance of several other names trees. I have seen another tree on the market which is similar but a different name.
Good heavens!...looks like it is possible that a few people came across similar sports at once.My scepticism was unfounded.Please don't release another though Lol.
I have 'Crumple Leaf', 'Ruby Ridge', Red Rugose" and have seen an 'Ogon sarasa' recently and can tell no difference between these cultivars. All are younger grafts (under 6 years old) and maybe they will show some differentiation as the age, but I have my doubts. I may be the first to say this, but your question and my above observations make me fear some cultivars are just renamed and reintroduced for whatever reason by some. That is as politically correct as I can put this fear/observation. I feel certain this statement may invoke some passionate responses, but this is a suspicion I have held for a short time since collecting Japanese maples. For what it is worth, my 'Shirazz' does differ from the several 'Geisha's I have managed to collect and kill. The variegation on my 'Geisha's have been more subtle than 'Shirazz' and overall they have been much slower growing (and so far easier to kill). Again, all of my grafts are younger as my collection is newer (and I cant afford larger/older specimens!). Maybe 'Gwen Rose Delight"??? is also similiar. Justin
from prior posting by Ron B. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=PP18728.PN.&OS=PN/PP18728&RS=PN/PP18728[/URL] he posted in 2008 on this forum... " Some cultivars do put out branches that change later, with those you don't want to cut off what seems at first to be the wrong type of leaves. You can tell what to do with a particular plant by watching it for a few years. If an aberration stays that way for too long then it needs to be pruned out. Note that 'Gwen's Rose Delight' is the cultivar name. Shirazz is a trademark (used to sell the cultivar 'Gwen's Rose Delight') rather than a cultivar name, and is therefore not presented in single quotes."
Sorry i can never keep up with all of the correct spelling and what not with the names. My point is that the reversion on a Geisha is named a minumum three times and we do not need a forth and a fifth. Confusion comes in due to the fact that the first two are seedlings. We can see from these photos there must have been a typo. I am suprised to here you can not see the difference between the trees you mentioned. I have owned and still own some of them. Ruby Ridge has a very unique leaf with a dark color almost unequal to any other cultivar. I am not sure what a Red Ruguse is so that one is beyond me. Ogon sarasa has a leaf size half of the size of Ruby Ridge and it color changes quite dramatically from the spring color to fall color. The growing habit of a Ogon sarasa is much taller than Ruby Ridge.
One thing I have to assume is these cultivars are and were named correctly and the 'Ogon sarasa' is not in my collection to compare side to side with the others. But the other 3 I see no difference in side by side as young trees... Sorry for the tangent I went down... here is link to 'Red rugose' from an online vendor. http://www.essenceofthetree.com/products/show/246 Justin
last year i looked in a green house that had a bizillion different seedlings all of which could have been grafted on and named. Looking at Red Reguse you can see it has Ruby Ridge like leaves and Ruguse type trunk habit. These are great collector trees but the fact is in a large form they would be most collectors in my yard. Last year I gave away my Ruguse and two Ruby Ridges. If the Ogon you saw has leaves similar to the other two than you might avoid it. All of the Ogon sarasa I have owned have had a much smaller leaf which lays flat. The color of it is turns red and then in late summer turns gold which is where it gets its name. I look at the trees a little different than most collectors since my tres are always going to new homes. a lot of what i post is what I need to know when i am referencing a tree for someone to put in their garden.
I have just bought a 'Shirazz' and am looking forward to seeing it leaf out at this stage. However, I can find nothing to substantiate your assertion that it is a 'trademark' for a different cultivar 'Gwen's Rose Delight' ???? Where do you get that information? Esveld describes it as a sport from 'Geisha' .. Any info will be appreciated :)
I am just re-reading your post, and it may be that your remarks are , in fact, a quote from RonB. If that is so, maybe he can enlighten us? :)
Just searched Sam..It appears that the patent holder(inventor)of GRD and trademark registerer of Shirazz both come from same address in Brixton NZ....Duncan&Davies though seems to be now Stepping Stones nursery http://www.iponz.govt.nz/app/Extra/IP/Mutual/Browse.aspx?sid=635979497022141649
You think he just decided to sell the cultivar by a different name then? Shirazz certainly seems to be the accepted name today ... RonB has referred in the past to the RHS viewpoint on the confusion with cultivar names and trademarks "Trade marks used in conjunction with, or apparently as cultivar names cause particular problems when assessing which words constitute a cultivar name and which are a marketing device. It seems that trade mark law is regularly misinterpreted when it comes to plants, since a trade mark is a device to identify goods from a particular source and cannot be used to identify a particular plant. However, the way names are presented on labels and in catalogues often leaves this as the only possible interpretation. Care is therefore needed when quoting trade marks alongside plant names. They are best treated as trade designations, i.e. printed in a different typeface but with the appropriate ™ or ® suffix"
Hi Sam, hope you're well. Shirazz and Gwen's Rose Delight are definitely the same maple. I researched this last year when I bought I Shirazz (which you will love) and the guy also had Gwen's; he thought they looked the same but didn't know. Unfortunately I can't recall where I learned this. But I do remember it was completely definitive. The World Checklist has Gwen's listed as a synonym for Shirazz, but I actually seem to remember that Shirazz is the trademark name and Gwen is the cultivar name. Or the other way around. :)
Who knows Jim?...The patent is meant to stop unlicensed cloning and the trademark is meant to stop any other plant being named Shirazz.As Charlie has confirmed,given the apparent readiness for Geisha to throw out these reversions(?)it may have been simply astute business sense to stop others being passed off for the same..eg another sport/reversion or even a clone of Talon's Geisha gone wild which I believe is a less vigorous plant. However Geisha seems very hard to get hold of...at least over here.
You will also find that these are being sold on line as 'Manyo-no-sato' in the UK of which they are not, made the cardinal error of buying one early this year on the belief that it was a MNS, tree was duly delivered but it still had the Shirazz lable still attached to the pot with a printed sticker of MNS over the Shirazz name!! Rang the guy who was selling them and he informed me they were the same plant?? but just going under another name which was common place, oh really!!! Couldn't be bothered arguing so i kept the tree and i must admit it's got a nice shape and is starting to come out nicely at this present time so we will see how it develops , but if i would have wanted a Shirazz originally i would have gone to Packhorse farm and bought one from there he has some real beauts, where intrestingly enough they are called 'Gwen's rose delight' Confused of Yorkshire.
It's like what came first, the chicken or the egg? Then to complicate things further it is combined with a widespread problem of human nature. What I mean is sometimes the source of a tree is kept secret out of fear of those who steal or fear of the truth coming out. Sometimes it comes down to poor documentation. For reasons I don't understand, there are those who want to take credit for someone's discovery, those who say they have a new variety when they actually know it exists as an older cultivar, and those who just fraudulently represent something as one cultivar when they know its not and play dumb when they are challenged by those who know (like in Roebuk's example above). Some lie, some steal, and its often the honest ones that are left behind; when it all comes down to money and the race to have the most or claim the fame of being the first, or have exclusive rights to "something new".
Here is what Talon says about his introduction: Flora Wonder Blog: Foliage Finale Geisha Gone Wild' originated as a branch sport on the New Zealand introduction 'Geisha', where one certainly did "go wild." Geisha can be attractive – and we still propagate a few – but it is an unstable wimp and not very hardy. Its instability can lead to plants with 100% 'Bloodgood' – type foliage – and I watched a couple of those for three years, and never did they resume the "Geisha" form. In another case a 'Geisha' produced a robust mutation that I eventually propagated and introduced as 'Geisha Gone Wild'. The "wild" form has proven to be very hardy and shines in full sun and is one of our best field plants. Oddly the Vertrees/Gregory 4th edition* says that 'Geisha Gone Wild' originated as a seedling of 'Geisha' – not true – and that it resembles 'Tennyo no hoshi' – huh? *I value the Japanese Maple book, and appreciate the effort it took to produce it, however I can nit-pick over a number of errors. Even the publisher, Timber Press, is full of it when they comment, "As a result of hundreds of years of careful breeding, they [maples] take the center stage in any garden they are found." I don't think any cultivar in the book was "bred," rather they were selected as seedlings or branch mutations, and there is a big difference between that and to be "bred."
In posts like this it is easy to step on people's toes. I choose not to do that at this time and have decided not to mention a certain person's name. I am not saying that person did what I proposed either. Think of it being purely hypothetical in that sense. I believe the subject of these three or four Maples has come up previously in this forum. I am not sure that a discussion in the return to wild type or a reversion in this case has been brought up before with some of these unstable plants. The issue I had years ago was that the Geisha that came into New Zealand from Japan was not the same plant I was aware of from Japan. From my understanding Gwen's Rose Delight was the parent plant from which Shirazz came about and was later named. Below is the basis of a note I wrote May 19, 2010. I am not sure I ever did send it to the intended party either. [ I don't know what all the hubbub is about Gwen's Rose Delight and Shirazz. It was my assumption based on what was listed on Duncan & Davies' web site that they held the patent for Shirazz. Talk to Michael Healy and ask him for the Maple Society newsletter that gives some details of the Society approval of the name Shirazz. Herein is the problem. If XXXX grafted Shirazz onto an amoenum rootstock he might just be able to get away calling his Maple Geisha Gone Wild. Amoenum rootstock can do some strange things to cultivars and one of them, XXXX was told this years earlier by Mr. Don Kleim, was that amoenum rootstock has been known to lead to a higher incidence of limb sport chimeras in unstable palmatum type cultivars. Meaning XXXX knows that with an amoenum rootstock that for the short term his grafted Maples may not look exactly the same as the Duncan & Davies nursery Shirazz that were probably grafted onto seedling palmatum rootstock instead. The dilemma I have is that I suspect that not even the patent report on Gwen's Rose Delight states that the Geisha parent plant was a grafted Maple. The Geisha I knew a couple of few years earlier from Japan was not an unstable tree by any means but if Duncan & Davies grafted the Geisha they had come in, and grafted Geisha onto a certain amoenum rootstock more than once, then I can better understand how a stable Maple became unstable. It was a smart move in a way to take the Geisha x amoenum progeny and graft that budwood or scionwood onto seedling palmatum rootstock and then sell it. What I am getting at is that as of today there is a chance that your Geisha Gone Wild from who knows and your Shirazz from whomever (I don't know your source for that Maple) may not be the exactly the same plant at this time, albeit their differences may only be subtle for now other than overall leaf size and perhaps can or may be indistinguishable later on in the two Maples lives once these plants settle down. We just do not know how either of those Maples will behave years down the road. They just have not been around for any length of time yet to know what their tendencies are grown in various locales. ] Jim
Then Talon's explains the history of all the varieties as he knows it. Flora Wonder Blog: Open Your Vertrees/Gregory Japanese Maple Book Acer palmatum 'Geisha Gone Wild' did notoriginate as a seedling from 'Geisha', as VGclaims, but rather as a mutation, a "wild" mutation at that. VG writes that "By a strange coincidence, a similar seedling of 'Geisha' with similar variegated leaves was selected and named 'Shirazz' in New Zealand..." Not so, as 'Shirazz' was also a branch mutation. 'Geisha' itself is very unstable, and out of a group of fifty, at least five-to-ten plants will throw out a more vigorous shoot; and maybe all of them eventually would if you kept them long enough. I've even had 'Geishas' go 'Bloodgood' in portions, and one tree in particular was entirely 'Bloodgood'-like. I kept it for a few years and it never changed, so it was eventually dumped. 'Shirazz' was introduced by the now departed Duncan and Davies Nursery, and I find it preposterous that they once claimed that 'Geisha' was a hybrid of palmatum and circinatum. The 'Geisha Gone Wild' photo on page 136 was from a late-summer shoot, and though I took it, I would not have used it as representative of the cultivar.
It seems that 'Geisha' was first and was very stable from Japan. Once 'Geisha' left Japan things changed... Once it left Japan and was grafted it suddenly became known as unstable in and "from" New Zealand. Mr Shep has some brilliant insight on how that could of happened in his post above. After 'Geisha' became unstable outside of Japan mutations were gtafted and several names and stories came into the market. Who really knows the real facts as too many stories have been told "as fact" and even found their way into books. The Japanese must be puzzled by all of these practices outside of Japan... I can't say for sure the real story, but Mr Shep brings some great insight from someone who was not involved in naming one of these varieties. Those who introduced a variety have their own story to tell and some of it lines up with each other and other parts of the story vary wildly depending on the source. All seem to agree that they are mutations from 'Geisha' but what Geisha? The one originally from Japan or the one some claim from New Zealand. All seem to agree they are mutations and not seedlings. Then one claims 'Geisha' was a hybrid of palmatum and circinatum, but was that just a story to cover up that it was originally in fact from Japan or was it a way of covering up that their stock plant was from Japan and their unstable "Geshia" was a result of grafting onto new amoenum rootstock and then back to palmatum rootstock. It seems that all the varieties claim either Geisha from New Zealand or the Geisha hybrid of palmatum and circinatum story which is laughable. None claim the stable 'Geisha' from Japan. We have learned a lot but we are back again to "What came first the chicken or the egg?" I stand by my original post...
I have forgotten what your original post was now JT1 :) But it seems that there are many questions and that the true answers are not going to be found I will stick with 'Shirazz' and hope, as Emery has said, that I am going to like it ...
Good choice! It's easier to call it Shirazz. You will like it I'm sure of it. Ours was a show stopper all last year (when moved into full sun). I call mine Shirazz as that is the common name that 99.9% of average people know it as. All the retailers sell it as Shirazz. To tell the average person its Gwen's Rose Delight would only confuse the average person and make an easy tree hard for them to find. If they called the average retailer looking for Gwen's Rose Delight they would not find it (even though Shirazz maybe in their inventory or available from their growers, they will not make the connection). If I was talking to a very experienced maple collector (or the maple police) I may call it 'Gwen's Rose Delight' also known as Shirazz. Then explain the story behind it if they really cared.
