I lost tags due to the sun bleaching of the black sharpies. I now use the metallic Silver Sharpies to label and tag everything. I have had tags exposed to full sun for over four years with no sun fade! And that is the water based Silver Markers that came out when VHS tapes were still in style and you needed a marker to mark up on a black surface. Sharpie also makes a newer oil-based paint marker now, that you can get in silver and gold. They also have a new pack out of them with a white, black, red, blue and yellow. I just started using them so I do not have the years of use behind them yet, but so far, so good.
When using the silver marker, if you do not like the light color, I trace over it in pencil and if the pencil fades, you still have the silver underneath it.
But I also double label everything. I bought bulk tag markers and write on it double sided, to put on a branch to read at a glance the variety, and I also use a stick label that I stick all the way down into the soil, so nothing can pull it out by accident as if it was stuck up. You can also use the silver marker on the pot itself, but I usually do not do that much since I reuse my 1 gallons when up potting.
On some of my more established larger trees, I will go ahead and use the nice metal plant labels that I then use a P-Touch labeler with the water resistant type P-Touch tape. I still make sure I have a second stick label in the ground for these too, because these metal labels, while pretty, do seem to get caught on things and pull up out of the plant pretty easily.
May seem a little crazy, but I still have a small collection of figs that I need to guess what they are because their labels got sun bleached with black permanent marker.
And then there are the vandals of the world, who have nothing else better to do. I read once, a lady who had all of her tomatoes labelled, only for some jerk kids, not to actually steal the tomato plants, but just removed all of her labels on purpose and mix them up just to be "cool". Another reason why I double label with a label stuck all the way in the ground or soil of the pot.
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