Re: sports
Ran:
>There is a vast difference between the general notion that Hostas
>"color sports" occure at the rate of one in ten thousand, and
>reality. Some of this stems from the tendancy on the part of those
>supplying labs with "new" material, to spend two little time (years)
>making sure tha entire original plant is completly "settled" before
>removing the buds to place in TC.
You shouldn't blame the TC labs for sported hostas that you get from
them, nor the person supplying the plants to the labs as, in reality,
hostas never really "settle down". Now, the TC labs could do a better
job of not sending off types and sports if they were to grow out the
plants in a nursery setting and carefully check them. However, most
TC labs are just that, a lab. They don't have the land to grow out
their TCed plants nor are they in the nursery business. Their
business is to take a hosta, put it into culture, propagate plants
from it and them sell off those plants while incuring as little cost
as possible to get them to a salable size. The sports you get in TC
plants are actually only a reflection of what occures naturally. Some
hostas if you propagate them aggressively will produce high rates of
sports. Others produce few sports or none. It's up to the growers
who get the TC plants to grow them and carefully evaluate them for off
types before selling them. The failure to do this is causing a big
problem for TCed daylilies right now.
Joe Halinar
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