[1] The ICNCP introduced the term and symbol "Group" in 2004, as a replacement for the lengthy and hyphenated "cultivar-group", which had previously been the category's name since 1969.
[3] There is a slight difference in meaning, since a cultivar-group was defined to comprise cultivars,[2] whereas a Group may include individual plants.
[5] This categorization does not apply to plant taxonomy generally, only to horticultural and agricultural contexts.
A Group is usually united by a distinct common trait, and often includes members of more than one species within a genus.
A plant species that loses its taxonomic status in botany, but still has agricultural or horticultural value, meets the criteria for a cultivar group, and its former botanical name can be reused as the name of its cultivar group.
A cultivar group may be surrounded by parentheses (round brackets) for clarity in long epithets:[1] ICNCP illustrates this order consistently, though in actual practice the cultivar name in single quotation marks may come before that of the cultivar group (with or without parentheses): "Group" is translated in non-English material, and uses the word order of the language in question, but is always capitalized.