Short of DNA testing, you'd never know if the all gold sport you found is the same as the all gold 'Golden Tiara'.

I don't know if the registrar would reject a sport registration if it was too similar. Not sure what the guidelines are there.

Okay, another one to meditate upon.....
Let's say you had the two parents of a hosta in high demand, and it had become unavailable, never to be sold again. Could you take those two parents and attempt to reproduce that particular hosta? Would chance be slim to none that you could get it again?

If you had several of the hosta throwing off sports all the time, could you get it to sport one too? Is that what you're asking but specific to Golden Tiara/Golden Scepter?

I was meditating on the naming of a sport from Vanilla Cream. It already has Ice Cream as a sport. I'm hoping it sports for me, so I can name something Vanilla Ice.

What would you call your sport if you did not get Golden Scepter? Perhaps Crown Royal? :) or Royal Crown?

Word games are always fun.

Or what about this scenario? Some open-pollinated seedlings sprang up near my Salute and my Frosted Dimples (closer to FD). They are blue. Frosted Dimples is the pod parent of October Sky and the pollen parent is Salute. If my seedlings end up looking like October Sky can I call them October Sky? I don't think so, unless as Melissa says they're DNA tested. I think that goes for Moccasin's and Paul's scenarios too.

Here is a link that might be useful: October Sky

ok.. that brown tyoing hurt my eyes.. and then we get the pic above..

jeez ...

i will track down a slap anyone who names another sport of GT .. there are what.. 2 million named sport of the tiara group ...

and i am getting close on the mouse ear sports ..

the striptease sports..

etc ...

please.. stop naming them ... unless you are going to sell them ...

and NO SEEDLING can ever be called a something else... that would be like saying.. all your kids are the same.. because they had the same mom and dad... the rules of genetics simply dont allow such.. they can not be the same.. no matter how close they LOOK ... [mel i spot on on the DNA verification]

finally ... the definition of a species.. is that they come true from seed... so only one hosta comes true from seed as far as i recall .. and.. lol.. i dont remember which at this moment.. i think because of the brown type and fuzzy pic...

now.. all that said.. PONDERING ALL THIS ON A STEAMY DAY ... sounds sublime.. especially if there is a cooling adult beverage involved ... so keep up the good work in that regard ... it makes for a great conversation ....

ken

Ken, your seedling comment makes sense. Sorry about the fuzzy pic. Are you sure you didn't have that adult drink???

Brown color bothers your eyes, Ken? Man, that would make looking at a decent beer or many whiskeys problematic.

Nope, ML, my musing Q was not limited to GT specifically. GT was simply the first hosta to come to mind and I thought it would be easier to understand the thrust of my Q by using a specific hosta.

Not knowing what guidelines are used in the hosta industry and not knowing how faithfully the industry follows guidelines adherence to genetics would actually dictate, I figured I would pose my query here where folks more "in the know" might chime in and enlighten me.