Patent ID: 7845112

Claim:
In a planter in which a transplantable plant having a stem and a root system is desired to be transplanted for growth and wherein the planter includes a container defining a sidewall or a bottom and an interior, the improvement characterized in that: there is incorporated within the sidewall or the bottom of the container a means for retaining the root system of a plant which has been transplanted within the container, the retaining means constructed of a resiliently-flexible material and defining an expandable opening which is movable between an expanded condition and a normally-collapsed condition and which is biased by the resiliency of the material of the retaining means from the expanded condition toward the normally-collapsed condition so that by urging a transplantable plant root system-first against the plant retaining means from the exterior of the container, the expandable opening is moved to an expanded condition from its normally-collapsed condition to permit the root system to pass through the expandable opening into the container interior and so that upon passage of the root system through the expandable opening, the expandable opening is permitted to return toward its normally-collapsed condition due to the resiliency of the material of the retaining means about the stem of the transplantable plant to thereby prevent the withdrawal of the root system of the plant through the plant retaining means from the container interior.