blown_dry thank you for your thoughts! I truly appreciate it. And apologies for mixing up the two. I know the difference but I was also posting at like 2 am so my mind wasn’t exactly all there. Haha.
This discussion is exactly why I wanted to pick everyone’s brain. While I understand the recommendation you’re making, there’s also a great deal of family desire to see the prefix resurrected. It’s the reason dahlias run in the family blood and because there are still “Blooms” living they don’t want that name and its history to go with them. Until I started digging into looking for the Bloom’s dahlias it actually seemed like many of Lewie’s contributions to the Pacific Northwest dahlia community and the Federation largely had been forgotten outside the family. And I don’t say that maliciously, it’s just that’s what happens when someone can’t pick up the family torch because they’re a widower or busy raising children. If I did get a trademark, it’d only be to protect the prefix—I wouldn’t want to enforce it for growers and sellers of our introductions; I’ve watched that vitriol on both sides unfold over the last year—but with just one cut flower farm growing it seems almost petty to me to do that. As Ted said, I think the delineation between Bloom’s and Blooms should be sufficient especially since my breeding efforts would be for the show world first. I am planning to breed for cut flowers under my own prefix. I dunno. Just a weird situation to be in all around.
