Re: HOSTA STERILITY

Jim:

>I am simply stating that it was a waste of time. No valid
>conclusions resulted. And if someone thinks valid conclusions were
>obtained, I wish that someone would prove it to me.

I'm going to stay out of the discussion of whether or not Ben's pod 
setting article should have been published or if it is a waste of 
space, but in a small way I would like to defend Ben a little bit.  
The results, as you say have a lot of potential errors, but as a 
general guide line it may have some value to novice hosta hybridizers 
who may want to have some idea as to how fertile a particular hosta 
may be.  The data as presented is somewhat useful for those hostas 
that generally set pods under open pollinated conditions - those 
hostas are most likely to produce pods under controled crosses, 
although that depends on the pollen used.  If readers keep in mind the 
limitations of the results, then it may serve some purpose.

However, there is some potential problems that may prevent hybridizers 
from trying a particular pod parent thinking it is "sterile" or of low 
fertility from looking at Ben's article.  Ben lists Golden Tiara as 
having low fertility by his open pollinated observations.  However, I 
have two scapes of Golden Tiara in my greenhosue that appear to be 
setting every pod with a certain pollen.  In many cases a certain 
hosta might not set pods under open pollinated conditions because they 
are fussy about what pollen they will accept.  

The other problem I have with Ben's article is that he claims to have 
collected every known hosta sport, but I can't seem to find many of 
these in his article.  I wanted to know the fertility of the green 
form of Fascination and the stable white centered form of Fascination, 
but they are not listed.  Also, I have an all green sport of Gold 
Standard that is about to bloom and I wanted to know if it had any 
fertility under open pollinated conditions since I have not been able 
to get any pods to set on Gold Standard.

Joe Halinar

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