Thoughts off the top of my head: November 2004
Hosta Trends?
Hosta seedling and sport competitions are becoming more and more popular. For the past few years there has been First Look and this year the Midwest Regional added a similar competition. The Hybridizer’s Group in Michigan has had a competition of a different sort for several years. In 2006 First Look will be held at the AHS National Convention in Philadelphia, giving it a national audience.
The big winners this year at the Midwest Regional were two very small white centered hostas from Walt Hoover. One was a sport of ‘Regal Splendor’ and the other a ‘Masquerade’ seedling. Arthur Wrede’s red petioled seedlings were the hit of First Look as well as a green margined sport of ‘Prairie Fire’ and a blue centered sport of ‘El Dorado’.
Sports will always provide attractive new hostas, often improvements on the original parent, with new and vibrant colors but not improved genetics. New hybrids of solid colored hostas provide new clump and leaf shapes as well as better vigor and disease resistance. Through hybridizing all these can become variegated, hopefully producing better hostas for our gardens.
The question remains, do these competitions reflect trends in hosta popularity? Are looks everything? Are white centered hostas collector’s favorites now? Are minis really that popular? Are red petioled hostas the wave of the future?
Unfortunately white centered minis, that grow poorly, and red petioled hostas, that are often not very red in the landscape, do not make great garden plants. Is there still a place for solid colored landscape hostas that grow well in our collections? Is that even important anymore or is it just a collector’s market now? I hope not
“Is that a hosta?” Syndrome
I do not want to beat this to death but I am sure you have been exposed to it. You stand in a wonderful garden, a collection of all the newest and best hostas, admiring a uniquely different hosta. It may even look a little weird, or even a lot weird. Another garden visitor, new to hostas, asks you “Is that a hosta?” Sometimes the object of their query is a heuchera or a spotted ligularia or even a cyclamen but in this case you are forced to reply, “Yes, it is.”
We all know that weird sells but how weird is too weird? Does it have to look like a hosta? Well, no. I remember Mike Koller’s super contorted ‘Sum and Substance’ sport with the white center that won all those ribbons at First Look. It looked alien and if it did look like a hosta, it was at best a radioactive mutant hosta. Will it sell? You bet it will.
‘Embroidery’ was the original “Is that a hosta?” hosta. It wasn’t even the plant itself that created such a fuss but the picture of it in Aden’s book. The plant itself was so rare that few people saw it which just increased the demand and price of it even more. When many of you finally saw the plant in person, you openly probably wondered what the fuss was about. I guess a picture is worth a thousand dollars.
All ‘Is that a hosta?” hostas are not misfits. Some are actually attractive. ‘Lakeside Looking Glass’ is so shiny that it looks like a plastic plant. Its habit and leaf shape look so simple that they appear artificial. Closely related ‘Lilypad’ has similar leaves but holds them up more like a hosta. It is actually a seedling from seed collected in Korea from a wild population of H. yingeri. I remember when I germinated those first H. yingeri seeds, before it was even named, I got that “Is that a hosta?” thought cross my mind.
‘Praying Hands’ is wildly popular despite looking like it is a hosta with herbicide damage. It certainly falls into that “Is that a hosta?” category. For my taste, it is too unhostalike, (is that a word?), but again I have never claimed to have good taste in hostas. To my surprise, upon seeing my new hosta ‘Corkscrew’, which I do think is hostalike, several hosta folks have remarked, “How is it different from ‘Praying Hands’?” For me when I see ‘Corkscrew’, I see ‘Tortifrons’, not ‘Praying Hands’ but again ‘Tortifrons’ is another weird little hosta that is not widely grown. (It does not tissue culture well and the original stock often grew poorly because of pest problems.) To me ‘Corkscrew’ is a normal hosta with extremely twisted leaves and ‘Praying Hands’, something more.
It all comes down to personal opinion and that is the fun of hosta collecting. I think appreciating hosta weirdness is an acquired taste and we all do not acquire the same taste in hostas. Many more “Is that a hosta” hostas are on the horizon. I may not like them all but I can hardly wait. Hostas continue to surprise me!