distribution. Most, if not all, hybrid plants, if they don't have sterile seeds and can be regrown, will not be the same as the original hybrid plant, thus ensuring the dependency on seed distributors for future crops. Collection sites The heritage fruit trees that exist today are clonally descended from trees of antiquity. Heirloom roses are sometimes collected (nondestructively as small cuttings) from vintage homes and from cemeteries, where they were once planted at gravesites by mourners and left undisturbed in the decades since. Modern production methods and the rise in population have largely supplanted this practice. UK and EU law and national lists In the UK and Europe, it is thought that many heritage vegetable varieties (perhaps over 2,000) have been lost since the 1970s, when EEC (now EU) laws were passed making it illegal to sell any vegetable cultivar not on the national list of any EEC country. This was set up to help in eliminating seed suppliers selling one seed as another, guarantee the seeds were true to type, and that they germinated consistently. Thus, there were stringent tests to assess varieties, with a view to ensuring they remain the same from one generation to the next. These tests (called DUS) assess "distinctness", "uniformity", and "stability". But since some heritage cultivars are not necessarily uniform from plant to plant, or indeed within a single plant—a single cultivar—this has been a sticking point. "Distinctness" has been a problem, moreover, because many cultivars have several names, perhaps coming from different areas or countries (e.g., carrot cultivar Long Surrey Red is also known as "Red Intermediate", "St. Valery", and "Chertsey"). However, it has been ascertained that some of these varieties that look similar are in fact different cultivars. On the other hand, two that were known to be different cultivars were almost identical to each other, thus one would be dropped from the national list in order to clean it up. Another problem has been the fact that it is somewhat expensive to register and then maintain a cultivar on a national list. Therefore, if no seed breeder or supplier thinks it will sell well, no one will maintain it on a list, and so the seed will not be re-bred by commercial seed breeders. In recent years, progress has been made in the UK to set up allowances and less stringent tests for heritage varieties on a B national