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The International Daffodil Register and Classified List
(1998)
CULTIVAR REGISTRATION
Daffodil cultivars are registered first "to prevent, as far as possible, names already appropriated being given to new seedlings" (RHS List 1907), and secondly to prevent the use of names which so closely resemble existing names that they would cause confusion (RHS Classified List 1908). In these and in other ways names must also conform with the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants - 1995, a basic rule of which is one that was first formulated for daffodil cultivars by the Royal Horticultural Society's Daffodil Conference of 1884, ie that new names should be "fancy names", not botanical names in Latin form.
More than 26,000 cultivar names have accumulated in the RHS files. The majority meet the Society's early strictures about form and largely conform with the International Code.
Unfortunately, however, much duplication has occurred over the years, sometimes accepted by the RHS itself in accordance with contemporary practice. In 1916, for example, it was laid down that unless a cultivar were exhibited for confirmation of name at an RHS meeting within five years of listing, the name would be erased from the Society's list and made available for re-use (though this did not apply to Australian and New Zealand cultivars.) Then in 1955 a quantity of names became available for re-use when some 4,000 cultivars were claimed to have become extinct; and in 1969 a rolling programme of deletion was planned, with the names of cultivars listed before 1930 to be omitted from the next following Register unless still in cultivation or shown to be of historical importance. More recent cultivars were to be similarly sifted in subsequent Registers.
Meanwhile, it was perhaps inevitable that not every daffodil grower the world over would find it easy or even worthwhile to notify the RHS of the cultivar names they chose to use. The chances of duplication were thus increased by the many names that never appeared in the RHS lists at all.
However, a firm stand against further duplication, either through permitted re-use or through failure to register, has once again been taken. The case was put by Dr Alan Leslie, Senior Registrar at the RHS: "Once a name has appeared in print it is there to cause potential confusion for evermore if another plant is allowed to take up the same name" (Notes RBG Edinb. 43 (1): 174 (1985)). It is in the interests of the grower, the retailer and the public to ensure that a cultivar name is unique within the genus.
The RHS became International Registration Authority for the genus Narcissus in 1955, at the invitation of the 14th International Horticultural Congress. The subsequent (1958) edition of the Classified List was the first to be entitled Classified List and International Register.
The main duties of the International Registration Authority for the genus Narcissus are:
(a) to register cultivar and cultivar-group epithets and to ensure their establishment;
(b) to publish full lists of all cultivar and cultivar-group epithets; and
(c) 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:
(a) to conduct trials;
(b) to judge whether one cultivar or cultivar-group is more meritorious or more useful than another; or
(c) to judge distinctness of cultivars or cultivar-groups.
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