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mariecook Woodinville, WA Jan 22, 2015

I'm looking for a plant with the name 'archie'. In the link below, what does this mean, cultivar? Is that the official name of the flower? Thank you.

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/213639/


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tapla Bay City, MI(Zone 6a) Jan 22, 2015

A 'cultivar' (short for cultivated variety) is a plant that has ben vegetatively propagated, usually for desirable characteristics exhibited by the parent material. A 'variety' is something that occurs naturally and is usually comes true from seed. A named variety is written in italics and lower case, and follows the species name, whereas cultivars are not italicized and are set apart by single quote marks.

I wasn't completely sure of what you were looking for with your question. I hope there is an answer in what I offered.

Al

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Pistil Lake Stevens, WA(Zone 8a) Jan 22, 2015

Hi Marie- I looked at the plant you found. It is a dahlia variety (called a cultivar), named Riverlea Archie. If you are looking to put a plant in your garden named Archie, this one does not seem to be commercially available. When plants are named scientifically, they write the genus, then species, then the variety or cultivar. The cultivar name is usually enclosed by '...'

I googled "cultivar archie" to see what might show up, and found a peony named Archie Brand, and an iris named Archie Owen and a fuchsia 'Archie Owen', Winter heath Archie Graham, and daylilly 'Unforgettable Archie".
Sadly, none of those seem to be commercially available. The best hope seemed to be some petunias bred by Elmer Archibald in NC, at Archibald's Greenhouses, that were recently patented. One such is a petunia named Archie's Lime on Yellow, another is petunia 'red2purple'. However it does not seem that they are yet commercially available.

Good luck-this is the place to see if someone knows of a plant named Archie.
If you can't find one, a somewhat convoluted way might be to find a plant named after Archibald Menzies. He was a physician/naturalist who sailed to the Pacific Northwest with Vancouver. He had plants named after him, but they used his last name: The Douglas-fir tree is Pseudotsuga menziesii, and the Pacific Madrona is arbutus menziesii. He also had an entire genus of shrubs named after him, the Menziesia genus, but later it was decided they were in the Rhododendron group so the name disappeared. This means you might already have an "Archie" in your garden, as these plants of course grow in Woodinville!
Good luck.

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