I rest my case: name shame

RobStar

RobStar

So I had a look at a vendor's site this morning.  Nice site and some good looking chili on there.  Running through the liost and then wham! l run into the total crappola that is going on regarding naming of cultivars. 
 
There are: Yellow Douglahs, Brown 7 Pot Rennie and Mafeking Mauve.  No no no.
 
If it is Yellow then it is a Yellow 7 Pot - how is this thing different from a 7 Pot.  A Douglah is not a Brown 7 Pot.  So in all likehihood this was a Brown 7 Pot gave rise to yellow offspring, therefore they are...............Yellow 7 Pots - they even look like Yellow BrainStrains (which are Yellow 7 Pot original strain as sent over by SR - go search for early threads on THP and you will see).  A Douglah does not look like a 7 Pot - check out THSC's offering of the Alphanerdz Douglah strain - that is a Douglah's shape although it is much paler than other Douglah strains. 
 
Then we have the Mauve Mafeking - which is pretty much identical to the "7 Pot" Burgundy.  Also a SR strain.
 
The Rennie is a 7 Pot.  Therefore if it is Brown it is a.................Brown 7 Pot.
 
This is all becoming a quagmire.  Every vendor wants to make out like they have something new and original when ultimately it is a new name for an old hat.  Smells of new money
 
 
Care to explain?
 
Douglah is a shade of brown.  If it is any other colour it is no longer a Douglah.  Can't say I have a Yellow Red-7-Pot.
 
Mafeking Mauve - looks like exactly the same thing as the Burgundy Congo (cos it ain't a 7 Pot).  How is it different?
 
The Rennie - c'mon!  It's a 7 Pot.  No different at all.  Good grief if I live in Trinidad and send a 7 Pot to growers in distant lands should it be called the 7 Pot RobStar?  Nope.  It is a 7 Pot.  So it is brown now - it is a Brown 7 Pot.
 
Unfortunately it just happens to be that it your list that is being criticised here - it is not a personal attack and I hope that it will be seen in that light.  It is an attack on a naming game gone bezerk.
 
You may be right but, I concur with Ocho anyone can name their own product anything they want.  Arguing in public  will only get the people who believe (or bought) em already aggravated, as well as possibly getting yourself flamed in public.
 
It's not that easy. In Trinidad, many different peppers, that vary extensively, are all lumped into the 7 pot name because they are all super hot. This is hundreds of different wild peppers. They do not have individual names for all the wild variations that can be found. There really is not one kind of 7 pot there.
All these names we use are to indicate the different lines from which they came.
A Rennie and a SR 7 pot are from different lines of peppers from the island. The SR coming over many years ago and the Rennie more recently.
Many growth habits and traits along with flowers and pod shapes and taste/heat are from these natural variations on the island & vary from one "7 pot" to another.
I agree the naming gets confusing, but it's necessary to separate from which or where the line was introduced.
Think of it as a road map to its beginning.
The douglah is an example. There are yellow and red mutations from the original color. The naming indicates thier origin, coming from a douglah. The brown 7 came from a 7 pot line, not from the douglah's, so the are not the same. They may both be brown peppers that originated in Trinidad, but they vary in many ways.
The Rennie is the same. Any color mutations came from the original Rennie that can be traced back to seeds sent from the island to armac here on this site.
Hybrids/crosses are a different story though.
We should also note that all 7 pots red, brown, or yellows are not the same at this point. Genetic drift, unintentional crosses and intentional crosses, to make a new colors, yield different results, resulting is many different plants.
We now have an extensive collection of peppers that come from what seems to be a relatively small list of original seeds from Trinidad.
Hope this somewhat clears this up for you and makes you realize that no one is trying to deceive you.
 
Ocho Cinco said:
I learned my lesson by posting something controversial like this in the past. If you have a question like this it is best to ask the vendor directly in a private message or email.
Click to expand...
 
Posting controversial opinions is a GOOD thing because it leads to discussion and information sharing (like the post quoted below by GA growhead). The OP stated that this was not an attack on a specific vender/user and that this was about a gripe with pepper nomenclature, so to speak. Which does seem to be an issue, even I can see that clear as day.
 
Point is, the stew gets stale when the pots not stirred.
 
GA Growhead said:
It's not that easy. In Trinidad, many different peppers, that vary extensively, are all lumped into the 7 pot name because they are all super hot. This is hundreds of different wild peppers. They do not have individual names for all the wild variations that can be found. There really is not one kind of 7 pot there.
All these names we use are to indicate the different lines from which they came.
A Rennie and a SR 7 pot are from different lines of peppers from the island. The SR coming over many years ago and the Rennie more recently.
Many growth habits and traits along with flowers and pod shapes and taste/heat are from these natural variations on the island & vary from one "7 pot" to another.
I agree the naming gets confusing, but it's necessary to separate from which or where the line was introduced.
Think of it as a road map to its beginning.
The douglah is an example. There are yellow and red mutations from the original color. The naming indicates thier origin, coming from a douglah. The brown 7 came from a 7 pot line, not from the douglah's, so the are not the same. They may both be brown peppers that originated in Trinidad, but they vary in many ways.
The Rennie is the same. Any color mutations came from the original Rennie that can be traced back to seeds sent from the island to armac here on this site.
Hybrids/crosses are a different story though.
We should also note that all 7 pots red, brown, or yellows are not the same at this point. Genetic drift, unintentional crosses and intentional crosses, to make a new colors, yield different results, resulting is many different plants.
We now have an extensive collection of peppers that come from what seems to be a relatively small list of original seeds from Trinidad.
Hope this somewhat clears this up for you and makes you realize that no one is trying to deceive you.
Click to expand...
 
Some interesting info right here. Thanks for taking the time to write it out.
 
It`s about tracing origins, largely, as well as providing us all with new colors of old favorites. I can tell you from experience that the Yellow and Red 7-pot douglahs have an overlapping flavor profile with the brown version. They taste differently from a bona fide Yellow 7-pot, which has become a variety in its own right, not just a color descriptor. Yes, you are right, it`s exactly like saying this pepper is a red brown. I have a natural mutation of the Brown 7-pot that is red. Again, it has aspects of the flavor of the original Brown 7-pot, not a jonah or a barrackpore or other red 7-pot. Personally, I use the designation Brown 7-pot (red mutation). 
 
In the case of the douglah, here`s a photo of a red mutation with the original brown. They look extremely similar, other than the color. 
 
 
The difference in peppers is all about their taste and heat. Even if two peppers look the same and are the same color, that does not mean they are the same pepper. Here's some examples. All with their own flavor profiles and heat levels. 

11109799836_407de3deaa_z.jpg

Brown Douglah
 
11109800486_9a30c72e61_z.jpg

7 Pot Brown
 
11109800614_07c53c21c0_z.jpg

Douglah Red
 
11109923303_02d41ea53c_z.jpg

Douglah Yellow
 
11109800046_627b48c735_z.jpg

Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Brown
 
11109923083_368d4edf94_z.jpg

Sepia Serpent
 
11109738095_5ec8a07484_z.jpg

Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Red
 
11109922833_68070508d4_z.jpg

7 Pot Brain Strain Red
 
As you can see, these peppers all look similar but I can tell you from experience, they all have their very own tastes and heat levels. The names I think are just want people know them by now. We are coming up with more and more peppers with interesting names, and crosses it's great! When they're stable that is...
 
If things never changed in color, heat, flavor, appearance, name ect......    our hobby would be growing jalapenos.
 
Ive bought a bunch of seeds. They are a few dollars no matter what. its a hobby, we spend $ on hobbies, it makes us happy....
I understand spending months growing something that doesnt live up to what its supposed to be but chalk it up and dont buy from there again.
 
Not saying at all any vendor is doing anything....i dont care that much.
 
If something known grows different in color or tails or flavor and it gets a new name... cool.... thats part of our hobby! I respect that the vendor probably knows more about it than me if something "looks" the same. Sh#t, most of our crazy varieties can be confused by anybody looking at them.
 
I have a few baggies of seeds with different names im sure are the exact same pepper. This is not one of the things i lose sleep over.
 
Just saying try growing and/or eating these peppers and see for yourself. PM the vendor. Id bet they will talk to you and maybe send a pod...dunno
 
Sorry just my .02
 
Growhead, Nigel & Lawrence - thanks for adding some valued input into this parlous state of affairs!
 
Aaron - quite correct, this is not a slamming of a vendor, it is about generating knowledge.
 
Meinchoh - you are hitting the nail on the head there!
 
OK off the bat - leave the vendor issue out of this - it is not about a vendor/personal gripe against someone/dislike/etc.  It just so happens that the three examples I mentioned were found on their site.  I don't think it is going to stop anyone from acquiring the material from them - there are many facets to this hobby/industry and some growers in fact want all manner of weird genetic variation and frankensteinian creations.  Me?  I'm a botanist.  Taxonomy is my hang-up.  I grow loads of cultivars and also dabble in hybridising but primarily I grow chili with a degree of provenance (can be traced to a person somewhere).
 
Now, back to my dissertation.  One of my favourites is the Douglah.  I have discussed it before but a summary will suffice: it is an outcross - it's name even supports this (mixed race in Trinidad) I have arrived at a parentage of a 7 Pot x Congo.  The flavour well-supports this as does the shape of the fruit.  It is a brownish fruit.  The Douglah is a cultivar - not registered as such but could easily be as it has a series of characteristics that define it.  A Granny Smith apple has a series of characteristics that define it.  If it was red in colour it would not be a Granny Smith!  The different colour forms that appear as seedlings cannot be called Douglah - if a chracteristically brown-fruited plant spontaneously threw out yellow or red fruits then these could be called Yellow or Red Douglah.  If they are sedlings then they are retrogressive and they deserve another name completely - if they are stable! 
 
Also very imporatnt to remember - many of these colour variations in the 7 Pot landrace are hardly stable - it would appear that redc is the basal, typical mature colour.  Yellow and Brown will arise.  Much in the same way, if you sow 1000's of Yellow the chances are that some of the seedlings will revert to red.  Same for Brown.  However if you weed out the sports and continue with the colour variation you desire then one can fix that trait (it will become homozygous).
 
Even though you have an entity that arose (from seed) from a characteristically typical cultivar, it is not that cultivar!  It is something else.  A Granny Smith is green, not red.
 
You are at full rights to name something whatever you want but at the end of the day you have to ask what the value is?  Are you actually contributing to a better understanding.  I have seen this happen with waterlillies and bromeliads - 1000's of useless names attached to genetically unimportant entities.  And all further breeding within this quagmore dissolves into a mess.
 
And that's it.  I am approaching this from a perspective of perpetuating real and recognised names based on a suite of characters.  A naming system such as the one perpetuated with the chili hobby is shunned by major plant group enthusiasts.  Imagine if the orchid hobby had this type of taxonomy.  There are rules governing the naming of entities.  I admit it is idealistic to expect an unstructured association of hobbyists to subscribe to this governace but it will have to at some stage - if you think I'm being over the top then consider the bromeliad hobbyists with their Cultivar Registry.
 
Naming can be what ever the breeder wants. I could name a jalapeno/cayenne hybrid the douglah jalapeno if I wanted. Does it have to be brown, super hot, or even have douglah genes? No, but if the taste reminds me of a douglah it could happen. As someone else pointed out, look at citrus fruit names. Blood oranges are not the same as an Orange but they share the name. Key limes and Limes are not the same fruit genetically at all, yet the names are the same. Naming can get confusing but that doesn't mean it is wrong. That being said, I do agree that when the offspring in a named unstable hybrid does not conform to the accepted breeding standards it should not be named after the line it arose from.
 
Let's leave semantics out of it.  It is a baseless argument.  Cats are cats.  Meerkats are not cats.  Dogs are dogs.  Parairie dogs are not dogs.  The "name-share" analogy is stunted at best and is totally defenseless.
 
A Siamese cat is a Siamese cat.  Your Siamese gives birth to kittens - one of which is black, with a squat face, short legs and a stubby tail.  Is it a Siamese?  You can't call it a Black Siamese.  It is something else because it does not fit within the parameters of being a Siamese.  It is a cat yes but not a Siamese cat.  Geddit?  That's the base for my discussion/argument. 
 
RobStar said:
Let's leave semantics out of it.  It is a baseless argument.  Cats are cats.  Meerkats are not cats.  Dogs are dogs.  Parairie dogs are not dogs.  The "name-share" analogy is stunted at best and is totally defenseless.
 
A Siamese cat is a Siamese cat.  Your Siamese gives birth to kittens - one of which is black, with a squat face, short legs and a stubby tail.  Is it a Siamese?  You can't call it a Black Siamese.  It is something else because it does not fit within the parameters of being a Siamese.  It is a cat yes but not a Siamese cat.  Geddit?  That's the base for my discussion/argument. 
Click to expand...
RobStar, you will never stop hobbyist growers from naming/misnaming their "varieties", and you cannot expect them to behave like botanists. Even Sysyphius would see it is a losing battle.
 
Chris I suppose you are right.  I'll admit that it is an idealistic desire.
 
Mike, if this has caused you any hassle I apologise.  It was never an intention to belittle you or your business.
 
i try to be as carefull as possable when nameing something i have decided to grow out, if i know for sure what the parents are i will usually Give it a compound name like "DATILARI"   DATIL x CUMARI
 
IF IM NOT SURE OF BOTH PARENTS BUT REASONABLY SURE OF AT LEAST ONE I NAME IT   ie "SCORPANERO"
 
I have one im playing with this year that is a cross between CGN 21500 AND 7 POT BARRAKPORE it had a rosey red hue to it and the CGN is a Dutch creation im PA DUTCH so i thought it would be appropriate to call it  "BLUSHING DUTCHMAN"
 
IF IT WORKS IT WONT BE THE WORLDS NEXT RECORD BREAKER BUT IT WILL BE INTERESTING JUST THE SAME!!
 
i dont feel that a premature name for it is wrong, if it doent work out then it doesnt bottom line its fun to try and see what happen
i find naming it something is better than  "THIS REDDISH THINGY"       OR SOMETHIN NON- DISCRIPT
 
 a name brings life to a project, im not saying i wanna market it with a fake name just to sell some seed but i try not to sell them for too much for many reasons one of them is if they fail at some point and i have had a few that have
 
I MARKET PEOPLE THAT LIKE TO TINKER lol    AND I DONT PATENT ANY OF THEM I SHARE THEM AS QUICKLY AS POSSABLE
 
an old saying most know is  HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY
 
THANKS YOUR FRIEND JOE
 
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Sorry been on vacation.
I have heard this "douglah" means brown or whatever..and you would be correct. But when you get a NATURAL red or yellow pheno..what are you going to call it other than a douglah? Yes a douglah was named because of its color but a natural strain of the same thing that is a different color is still a douglah. Its just a name. 
an SR is not a "strain". SR is the simply the name of Sarah (who brought a lot of seeds back from her homeland of trinidad and gave these seeds to people) and people attached SR to it to know who brought it back. 
 
Mafeking Mauve is a pepper I got this year directly from Sarah which she brought back for me in 2012 which is why on my store i put SR behind it. Doesnt mean its something different from the Mafeking Mauve, I just put the SR on it to know where I got it and no it doesnt look like a 7 pot burgandy. If memory serves me correctly the burgandy is one of judy's creations.
 
the moruga and the brain are NOT the same pepper and you say the brain looks like a 7 pot. Yes you would be correct. If you know the history of this pepper (brainstrain) you would know that Cappy got original 7 Pod red seeds from sarah. They weren't "bumby" like the brainstrain is for the most part. He noticed some peppers that had the "brainstrain" look. He selected these and kept replanting. Eventually he had plants that were producing all pods with the bumpy look. It was a natural pheno of the 7 pod red. 
 
I have 7 pod brown, douglah and also moruga chocolate and I can tell you they do NOT look the same. If yours do then you dont have true strains.
 
7 pot rennie..go to my site and the background on this is explained in detail. I believe myself and richard hickey are the only two that got a brown pheno..i could be wrong. If you think this looks like a 7 pot brown you better look again. They look nothing alike nor are they they same heat. The brown is EXTREMELY hotter than the rennie. Is the rennie something that is already out there? I have no clue and neither does the person that brought them to us. Does it look like other 7 pots we have? No it doesnt.
 
And I DO NOT agree with naming things whatever you want. There is WAY to much of that. When we come into seeds, we grow them out first (at least 1 year sometimes more). We sell them with the exact name we go them as unless we completely know it is bogus. For instance, Fatalii chocolate. We do sell them with the same name we go them as and what everyone (even very reputable people) tells us they are..but to me it is NOT a fatalii. If you look at the description on my store, you will see that I state that very clearly. Could I rename this to something else? Sure, but I don't do that. 
 
RobStar said:
You are at full rights to name something whatever you want but at the end of the day you have to ask what the value is?  Are you actually contributing to a better understanding.  I have seen this happen with waterlillies and bromeliads - 1000's of useless names attached to genetically unimportant entities.  And all further breeding within this quagmore dissolves into a mess.
 
And that's it.  I am approaching this from a perspective of perpetuating real and recognised names based on a suite of characters.  A naming system such as the one perpetuated with the chili hobby is shunned by major plant group enthusiasts.  Imagine if the orchid hobby had this type of taxonomy.  There are rules governing the naming of entities.  I admit it is idealistic to expect an unstructured association of hobbyists to subscribe to this governace but it will have to at some stage - if you think I'm being over the top then consider the bromeliad hobbyists with their Cultivar Registry.
Click to expand...
 
Welcome to the wild west RobStar ;) .
 
:welcome:
 
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