WHAT’S IN A NAME? UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA & PURE SEED RESOLVE TURFGRASS NAME DUPLICATION
By Stacie Zinn Roberts
It’s not every day that a product’s name is changed once it’s released. But a special circumstance that illuminates the difficulty of product naming recently prompted the University of Georgia (UGA) to announce a name change for a variety of vegetative seashore paspalum turfgrass, now called SeaScape™. When the variety was originally announced in January of 2023, the grass had a different name: SeaBreeze™.
Te issue was that a seeded fescue with the variety name ‘Seabreeze’ was already in the marketplace. Developed by Pure Seed, ‘Seabreeze’ slender creeping fescue, (Festuca rubra trichophilia), was released to the market in 1992. In 2003, Pure Seed released its successor, an improved and glyphosate-tolerant fine fescue called ‘Seabreeze GT.’
How could this happen?
Te SeaBreeze™ name was originally chosen to continue the tradition of naming UGA salt-tolerant paspalum varieties with the “Sea” prefix paired with a word that invokes images of waterfront golf courses and lawns. Earlier releases wore monikers such as ‘SeaIsle 1’, ‘SeaIsle 2000’, ‘SeaIsle Supreme’, and SeaStar®.
Te variety was met with much fanfare and turf industry media coverage. It is a vigorous vegetative seashore paspalum cultivar that produces excellent quality turf under a range of mowing heights and is suitable for use on golf courses, athletic fields, home lawns, and other recreational venues as fine turf. Tis variety was tested under the experimental name of ‘UGP 73’ and has been under development and evaluation for 16 years. It has been evaluated extensively both in the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program (NTEP) at eight southern locations from 2016-2020 where it was a decisive winner, and as part of a USDA Specialty Crops Research Grant (SCRI) to develop improved drought and salinity tolerant warm- season grasses, where it was tested at six southern locations from 2011-2013. In the initial two-year SCRI drought trials, ‘UGP 73’ was the top-performing entry in overall turf quality out of 80 entries. It also underwent advanced trials in SCRI at six locations in 2016-2019.
In the world of plant marketing, finding a unique name for a new plant variety can be a daunting task. According to the International Plant Names Index database, there
32
are more than 1,433,000 named plant varieties. Finding a name that speaks to any product’s attributes is hard enough. Creating a brand name for a plant is not just limited to searching other plant names. Plant breeders compete with every other type of product to name their progeny. With the onslaught of drug companies marketing pharmaceuticals under catchy brand names, the task of creating a “fanciful name,” (a distinct and invented word or combination of words that describes a brand), is now even harder. Tat may be why so many drug companies have turned to creating names with odd spellings or strange combinations that you see advertised on the evening news—think Latuda, Skyrizi, Zyrtec, and the like.
Even if you do create a name that sounds good and tells your plant’s branding story, research must be done that determines if the name you’ve invented hasn’t been thought up by someone else already—and if it’s available for use.
To add to the confusion, in the plant world, seeded variety names may be protected under PVP (Plant Variety Protection), while vegetatively propagated varieties are most often protected in the United States by filing a plant patent and/or a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Typically, names used in different market segments may be similar or the same without causing confusion. Although a cool-season seeded fine fescue is not likely to be confused with a warm-season vegetatively propagated seashore paspalum, Pure Seed had protected the variety name ‘Seabreeze GT’ under PVP prior to the University of Georgia acquiring name protection under trademark. And as the two databases don’t cross-pollinate, (pardon the pun), the naming conflict was missed.
TPI Turf News March/April 2025
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
