1.11.2 Classification of Cannabis Assemblages as“Groups”
Under the Cultivated Plant Code
Confronted by a growing body of plant names applied to cultivated plants, tax-
onomists created a special code using non-Latin or“fancy”names (Stearn 1952 ).
Since the middle of the twentieth century, domesticated selections of plants termed
“cultivars,”which satisfy certain descriptive and publication requirements, have
been the subject of a special, at least partly non-Latinized code of nomenclature
(International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants; ICNCP; Brickell et al.
2009 ). The ICNCP provides the following definition:“A cultivar is an assemblage
of plants that (a) has been selected for a particular character or combination of
characters, (b) is distinct, uniform, and stable in these characters, and (c) when
propagated by appropriate means, retains those characters.”Article 9.1, Note 1
restricts the meaning of cultivar as follows:“No assemblage of plants can be
regarded as a cultivar...until its category, name, and circumscription has [sic] been
published.”(Webster’s Third (1981) New International Dictionary provides a more
general definition of a cultivar:“an organism of a kind (as a variety, strain, or race)
that has originated and persisted under cultivation.”) Cultivars as defined by the
ICNCP can be of quite different nature (e.g., they may be hybrids, clones, grafts
(i.e. combinations of species), chimeras (with genetically different tissues), and
even plants that are distinct simply because they are infected by a microorganism),
but frequently many of the cultivars within a given species differ very little
genetically from each other. There are more than a hundred recognized cultivars of
non-intoxicating forms ofCannabis, currently grown forfiber and/or oilseed. Only
a handful of biotypes bred for authorized medicinal usage at present are regarded as
cultivars under the ICNCP (there are also numerous breeding lines which are not
afforded cultivar recognition). There are also over a thousand illicit or quasi-licit
marijuana“strains”(or at least allegedly different strains) that are currently circu-
lated in the black, gray, and medicinal marijuana trades (as noted earlier,Cannabis
strains are biologically equivalent to cultivars, although not nomenclaturally). Many
cultivated plants ofCannabisare“land races”—populations domesticated in a
locale, typically selected over long periods by unconscious (non-planned, unde-
liberate) selection by traditional farmers, usually adapted to local stresses, and often
much more variable than modern cultivars. (In numerous crops, land races have
provided the raw materials from which cultivars have been selected.) The ICNCP
does not adequately address nomenclature for land races (unless they have been
recognized as cultivars, which is quite infrequent), but does provide a context for
classifying and naming cultivars. There is no provision under the cultivated plant
code for special recognition of uncultivated, wild (ruderal) plants, but it is under-
stood that nomenclature for the wild phases of a species normally falls under the
comprehensive plant code (ICNAFP). The ICNCP is mainly concerned with names
of plant groups that differ from each other mostly in minor ways (terms such as
“biotype”or“strain”are accurate, although not officially acceptable for naming
purposes). Except for the“group”category discussed next, the ICNCP has not
1 Classification ofCannabis sativaL. in Relation... 47