Re: Breeders' Rights

Bill:

>What is happening in the daylily world? Does anyone get Plant 
>Patents? Is there still a market for $100+ plants, or is tissue 
>culture changing the scene as dramatically is it is in hosta?

There is still demand for $100 and higher daylilies, but in reality 
only a few big named hybridizers are able to get those prices, and 
they spend big bucks on advertising and promoting themselves.  A lot 
of small amateur hybridizers do price their new introductions at $100 
or better, but they sell very few plants and after a year or two it's 
difficult to find them available.  I talked to a person who introduced 
a bunch of daylilies at the $40 to $50 price range and he was pretty 
excited about it.  I was trying to figure out a way to get him to let 
me propagate some stuff for him, but then I discovered that he was 
only selling about 50 plants from a total of about a dozen 
introductions.  Hardly worth the effort.  

So far few daylilies have been patented.  Daryll Apps patented Rosy 
Returns, but it's not going anywhere because it is too expensive.  
American Perennials on MO has patented a few and they are also not 
going anywhere - they patented Black Eye Stella and it bombed out.  
There are a lot of wholesale nurseries that buy their daylilies from 
growers like myself and then pot them up and sell them to their local 
mass merchants or local landscapers.  These wholesale nurseries are 
very price conscious, and they also don't like patented plants.  For 
the most part there hasn't been much demand for patenting daylilies.

Daylilies also have not been TCed very much, although that may change. 
There was some effort to TC them, but the results were poor with a lot 
of off types and some daylilies just did not respond well in TC.  For 
the most part daylilies are easy to propagate and once you get to a 
certain supply it's easy to maintain a sales level that you are 
comfortable with.  You can be much more aggressive with propagating 
daylilies then with hostas because you don't get all the sports you 
get in hostas.

However, some of the big named hy bridizers are discovering that their 
$100 introductions are quickly being offered by the national mail 
order catalogs for $15 to $20, which means they are being sold 
wholesale for one to two dollars.  Some of these plants may be TCed, 
but it isn't the hybridizers who are going the TCing.

Joe Halinar

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