Full name and status: Invalid for use as a cultivar name Hoya pubicalyx PINK SILVER (Bishop Nursery,1978) is a Trade Designation. It is not a cultivar name or synonym (Art.13,Brickell et al, 2016).
The cultivar that this trade designation and potential mark applied to is pending determination (including further inquiry with the U.S.Patent and Trademark Office). It is not equivalent to the cultivar ‘Silver Pink’ as it has been determined today. The trade designation is widely misapplied as a cultivar name. It was used by Cobia,Inc. to sell a selected sport which may be unique or may be identical to one which was in the trade decades prior (undetermined, update forthcoming).
Please contact me at anytime with questions, potential mistakes, and cultivar or Group registrations.
Can you help the ICRA? I am in search of United States Plant Patent or Patent Application no.3204 with my source as pictured below. Names associated are most likely to be B.L.Cobia, Roger L.Martin, Barnell L.Cobia, but it may have been transferred from another holder. This was not previously mentioned in published materials as a patented plant (I suspect it may be either an application or rejected). The usual title when a patent has been published by Cobia,Inc. is ‘Milkweed Plant’, but it is sometimes a more specific name of the invention. Years of inquiry (based on range of other sources): 1967-1977.
Annotated sources:
(1978). Special Sale! Bishop Nursery Insert. Plants Alive! p.34
The above source includes an insert from Bishop Nursery featuring the title “Three New Hoyas” with accompanying photos at the bottom of page 34. A patent number is listed for each, and they are described. Two of the trade designations are registered Trademarks (now expired) to B.L.Cobia,Inc. and they appear in all capital letters with a version of the published names from the distributor in italics below. This is how we know they are trade designations, or selling names as in Article 13. We see KRIMSON PRINCESS above the name Hoya carnosa rubra (Hoya carnosa ‘Rubra’).. and HINDU ROPE above the name Hoya compact regalis, which is Hoya carnosa ‘Regalis’. Under the trade designation PINK SILVER there is the incorrect but commonly used name for what has since been identified as Hoya pubicalyx from horticulture: Hoya Purpurea-fusca.
Brickell, C.D. & Alexander, C. & Cubey, Janet & David, John & Hoffmann, M.H.A. & Leslie, A.C. & Malécot, Valéry & Jin, Xiaobai. (2016). International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants.
Browder,H. (Mar.23,1969). Hoya Pink Silver. The Orlando Sentinel. Orlando,Florida.
The writer in the above press release vividly describes an in-demand selection and release process, the discovery of a sport by an “imaginative Florida grower”, and “a four year propagation study”.
Here is an undated photo circulated by B.L.Cobia, Inc, which they used for marketing their cultivars (also often legal varieties), shared here for educational purposes and in order to provide some photographic basis for the sport which was marketed under the trade designation. This is from the archives of Ted Green and the letter from the Director of Research is dated 1978. Additionally, there is the photo which was used to market this Hoya which was used by Bishop Nursery (1978), and shows a more mature plant in bloom, with maroon flowers and rather narrow leaf bases, but less of the leaves showing.
