Plant Passport question

[MikeDom]

I came across these plants with a Plant Passport with the species identified as Aloe polyphylla. It doesn't look like any A. polyphylla I've got, so is this wrongly named or a cultivar perhaps?

[Diane]

Definitely not polyphylla! Which just goes to show that plant passports are a waste of time, I think. ( It looks like a hybrid, but no idea which).

[Herts Mike]

Quite attractive though.

[David Neville]

The plant in the photograph is the widespread and freely clustering hybrid between Aloe descoingsii and A. haworthioides. I believe that it was originally produced by John Bleck in the USA. Nowadays it is sometimes seen labelled as 'Pepe', but I have no idea who coined that name, or when it was applied. In years gone by it was never known in the UK with that cultivar name. It is a vigorous, fast growing plant, but as the individual rosettes are usually no more than 5 or 6cm diameter, it is certainly not unmanageable. Each of the parent species are much more worthy of a place in a collection than this considerably easier and faster growing hybrid.

[edds]

They certainly do seem to be turning out to be the bureaucratic nonsense a number predicted they would be! What a waste of time and money! Be much better if any plant sold simply had to have the grower's name attached in some way!

[MatDz]

They certainly do seem to be turning out to be the bureaucratic nonsense a number predicted they would be! What a waste of time and money! Be much better if any plant sold simply had to have the grower's name attached in some way!

Isn't that what the B-D fields are supposed to tell? I understand the passport's role is to aid in tracking the plant's route to the market, not the taxa really (which would be nice, but for that we have the small, specialist nurseries).

[edds]

Yeah it is but why not just put the name and address there so it can be traced if there is a problem rather than making it some reference code that only DEFRA or whoever it is inspecting then knows?

[MatDz]

Yeah it is but why not just put the name and address there so it can be traced if there is a problem rather than making it some reference code that only DEFRA or whoever it is inspecting then knows?

You just answered your own question, no business wants to be bothered by the customer 5 steps down the line, also not many intermediary suppliers want to give away their own suppliers (sometimes labels make this obvious of course).