It is a noid if you can't identify it. Most optimara are noids because they have so many that are almost identical it is almost impossible to identify them. They are lovely, though.

The fair and honest way to handle it in a trade would be to call it a noid, send a picture and to say, "It looks to me like "X".

Hi,

I agree with Jen. I would call it a noid. Unless you are absolutely certain that the plant is what you say it is, I don't think it's fair for you to guess and have it offered as being true just because it had a tag underneath it. I wouldn't want someone to give it to me under those circumstances. I would not feel it morally acceptable for me to pass the plant off as the real thing. I would definitely put a disclaimer on it.

I hope this helps,

Larry

It is not unusual to find that a place selling Optimaras will have to identical looking plants with different name tags and 2 very different plants with the same name tag. Whenever I have pointed this out to a shop I get the same answer: Oh, the kids move the tags around. Isn't it curious that this only happens to Optimara plants.

A lot of what the big box stores sell are seedlings of the varieties they say they are, so they will have two that are grown from seeds from the same plant that aren't at all the same.

One way to ID your plant is to send for the named variety from Optimara. Then grow it along side your NOID. It then should be relatively easy to see if they are the same cv. You can ID it by the foliage as well as the flowers. There are only a finite number of optimaras. There are some that look much alike but the differences would be easy to see in plants side by side--by comparing the foliage as well as the flowers. There are, however, thousands of named AV's and the ID's of many can be impossible, unless the cv is unique.

You could also email a photo of your plant to Optimara and see if they can give you a good ID.

When I have a plant, of any type, that has no ID I put a note on the label that tells me this. My code is "LL", which stands for "lost label". Then if I am able to ID the plant I still know that my ID was put on a plant that had no name. If I am not certain of the ID then I add question marks. Sometimes I will cover the label with little notes to myself--not very useful when propagating ;).

But for trading I would just tell the truth of the situation--and include the URL of the photo on the optimara site. Even when buying named AV's there is always the question of ID. Leaves can sport very easily, and plants can change over time. I once saw a group of AV's entered in a local show, that had been previously distributed to the members by leaves, as a club project. Then the members entered their plants, presumably all of the same cultivar, in a special catagory in their show. There were lots of variation in the flowers from plant to plant. It obviously was not very stable.

Jon