Nelumbo Registration

Introduction to Cultivar Registration

International Cultivar Registration Authorities (ICRAs) are appointed by the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) through its Commission for Nomenclature and Registration and are contracted to operate within the provisions of the current edition of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP).

The purpose of an ICRA is to:

Promote fixity and stability in the nomenclature of cultivars and cultivar-groups within designated plant groups and to produce and promote authoritative checklists and registers of all names known to have been in use in such groups. The importance of horticultural taxonomy is in the resolution of the often complicated identification and nomenclatural problems that arise as a consequence of makeup of the contributing groups; specialist amateurs, the nursery trade and plant societies.

The International Waterlily and Water Gardening Society(IWGS) is recognized by the International Society for Horticultural Science as the official registrars of Nymphaeaceae and Nelumbonaceae. The IWGS has designated Andrew Doran, Scientific Collections Manager at the George Safford Torrey Herbarium, University of Connecticut, as the ICRA for Nymphaeaceae (waterlily family) and Virginia Hayes, Curator of the Living Collection for Ganna Walska Lotusland, as the registrar for Nelumbo (lotus). Their purpose is to serve local, national and international horticulture through recording and clarifying areas of confusion in the naming and identification of cultivated plants in the these families.

Cultivars of Nelumbo are registered first "to prevent, as far as possible, names already appropriated being given to new seedlings", and secondly to prevent the use of names which so closely resemble existing names that they would cause confusion. In these and in other ways names must also conform with the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants.

The main duties of the Registrar for Nelumbo are:

• to register cultivar and cultivar-group epithets and to ensure their establishment;
• to publish full lists of all cultivar and cultivar-group epithets; and
• to maintain records, in as great a detail as is practical, of the origin, characteristics and history of each cultivar and cultivar-group.

It is not the duty of the International Registration Authority:

• to conduct trials;
• to judge whether one cultivar or cultivar-group is more meritorious or more useful than another; or
• to judge distinctness of cultivars or cultivar-groups.