Full Name & Status: Hoya carnosa ‘Krinkle 8 Variegata’ is the Accepted and Established name for a unique cultivar.
Categories: Selected Mutation, (V), Legal Variety (exp.)
Synonyms: Hoya carnosa ‘Krinkle 8 Variegated’ Hoya carnosa ‘Variegated Krinkle 8’
Name Background: This name is held today in the United States Patent and Trademark Office with the fully described cultivar in Plant Patent 4,199 from January 24, 1978. It is tied to many print materials both before and since that date. The name is based on the cultivar this one derived from + description in latin so would not be acceptable if it had not been maintained by a statutory registry.
Originator: Barnell L. Cobia & Stephen H. Griffith ..These two appear in here many times. Barnell is the founder of B.L.Cobia, Inc, and originator of several of the most famous Hoyas we still grow today. Stephen H.Griffith was the B.L.Cobia,Inc. Director of Operations and was involved in their sport mutation development program.
Description: The cultivar is well and fully described in the patent. These are highlights and excerpts only. Hoya carnosa ‘Krinkle 8 Variegata’ is alike ‘Krinkle 8’, but with outside-margin variegation.
According to the patent, it was developed from a mutation that appeared on a specimen “of the Hoya carnosa Krinkle 8 variety” (which may or may not mean that many iterations of development were underway; see Hoya carnosa ‘Tricolor’ for a brief history of B.L.Cobia, Inc and mutation development. Plant names written exactly as they are in the patent, errors intact. At the time, Hoya carnosa ‘Krinkle 8’ was a legal variety).
Differs most markedly from Hoya carnosa ‘Krinkle 8’ in that it has variegated leaf blades with a range of different colors. It has many similarities to the parent cultivar aside from this, such as 6-10 “dimples or indentations” on each leaf blade.
The albino margin is described as being “frequently discontinuous”. This can be seen in the photographs with a margin which is very wide in some parts of the leaf and disappears into a narrow strip of (deep olive) green in others.
There may be more than one similar cultigens in need of further clarification.
This cultivar is NOT the inner-variegated cultigen which has not yet been named but is sold under this established name, showing light green and yellow at the center of the leaf blade with dark green at the margin.
Availability: Lost, near to lost. The Hoyas which are sold under this name are almost always incorrectly labeled ‘Suzy Q’ or the inner-variegated mutation which will be discussed in its own space. Hoya carnosa ‘Krinkle 8 Variegata’ has occasionally been sold as Hoya carnosa gammal (TH, US, SE), meaning ‘old’ in Swedish. Gammal is not a unique cultivar name and is instead a descriptive term that growers in some parts of the world use in the manner that growers in other parts of the world use the word heirloom. It is intended to indicated that a clone has been in a family for a long time, or is very old. The word gammal has described plenty of clones of carnosa, both decades old and centuries old in the trade, and as a descriptor it isn’t reallly all that old at all. It cannot be assumed to be a synonym of Hoya carnosa ‘Krinkle 8 Variegata’.
Sources:
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.
Cobia, B.L. & Griffith, S.H. (1978).Hoya carnosa ‘Krinkle 8 Variegata’. (U.S.Plant Pat.No. 4,199). United States Patent Office. Held here at: Google Patent Repository