RHS Registration system for Cannabis? Maybe?

[Luke Skywalker]

Hi there guys and gals, one of the things that I love botanically aside from the good old MJ is the Orchidacea. I have a small collection, and they bring me much pleasure. Anyway, Orchids are the largest family of flowering plants, and since hybridising begain in the 1850's, there have been literally hundreds of thousands of hybrids created. (This will all make sense eventually, so try to stay with me.... please?! ) The Royal Horticultural Society runs an Orchid Registration List, which is published every 2 months and lists all registered orchid hybrids, and their parentage so that everyone can keep track of the parents and progeny of hybrid orchids. The names registered then apply to all future crosses of the same type. For instance, if you cross a Cymbidium eburneum and a Cybidium lowianum then the plants which grow out from the seed are all called Cymbidium Eburneo-lowianum, which is the registered name for the plants of that parentage. If you should get a particularly different plant from this cross, which has some distinguishing feature, then you can also give it a cultivar name, which differentiates it from its siblings. So if I bred the aforementioned Cymbidiums together, and I got a plant from the group which looked substantially different from the others of that cross, then I could call it, say, Cybidium Eburneo-lowianum "Skywalker", and then when somebody uses this plant in the future to hybridise, they know which plant your talking about..... (Wipes forhead, looks around, shugs and goes on...)

 

So, how about setting up something similar for Cannabis? Now, we have genetics index sites, and most of the seedbanks have respectable collections of differing plants which they all call different things, and sometimes different plants go by the same name. So how about setting up a true, legally recognised system of naming hybrids and landraces, with an aim to something similar to the RHS Orchid Registrar? Now, this is just a tentative idea, and I haven't really thought it through too thouroughly, but it seems to me that we growers put up with a lot of shit when trying to get reliable, and known genes for growing. If there was some kind of internationally accepted authority when it came to registering different cultivars of out favourite plant, then life would be made considerably easier, and those peddling crap genes claiming that it's something that it's not would have their work cut out, as everyone would know what a "real" or registered "White Widow" was, and would be able to compare the "real" thing with what some are saying they have.

 

Once again, this is just tentative, and I would greatly appreciate any input you may have on this....

[Ferre]

I am all for it, there only a few things I wonder about.

Isn't the flower genetics bank, like for tulips here in Holland, backed up scientificly? like those genetics are checked by a third party of experts? Isn't this all very official and registerd in some international botanicus archives? To do it all proper the cannabis strains should be classified by those same international institutions I think. They archive evey plant on earth, so why not cannabis strains that are developed now? they do with all other crop, like tomato's and such, and flowers, I know.