A Question of Breeding

                                        A Question of Breeding

I have followed the comments about names and registration. it is always a
delight to watch Chick's nimble mind deal with a collective reality.  It
makes sense to register plants. it makes sense to name them. Yes you may
not get your favorite name because someone else gets it first . Too bad. No
sympathy there.  Most names are far too cute and don't fit the plant, but
fit the vanity of the person naming the plant.  None of this is sinful
behavior. It childish fun.  I have been there.

I do have a question however about registration. I heard a great appeal
from Kevin Walek this last summer at First Look 4 as to why the plants
should carry their ancestry on registrations...that this was really
important. I can see how it is important in some cases, but in others I
think that information becomes useless. I am willing to be wrong about
this. I have discovered that the more I deal with hostas the more wrong I
am am. Here is a real case of mine (please don't ask me to support the
logic of the crosses involved) that seems to me to beyond the pale in terms
of listing pollen and pod parents.

Here is one of my breeders. No doubt someone can point out how stupid I was
to do this. It started 10 years ago.  I took a streaked H. 'Fragrant
Bouquet' as pod parent and used H. ' Sum and Substance' as pollen parent.
I got a couple of strange streaked seedlings and quick bloom. I took this
plant when it bloomed and used the pollen parent H. 'Green Piecrust'.  In 3
years  a piecrusted edge appeared on a streaked seedling. This bloomed and
I  used  H. 'Golden Sculpture' as a pollen parent. Again I got some
streaked seedlings in a couple of years and then used H. 'Niagara Falls' as
pollen parent.  I have bred some plants now with this plant as  the pod
parent. The ancestry of these hostas seems so twisted and mut-like that I
can see no value in offering the ancestry if I register anything from it.
I know I am right about this but will listen to opinions which support
registration with the whole family picture in case I am wrong. Saying open
pollination would be a lot easier.

"Any more would have been less." Artie Shaw

Glen Williams
20 Dewey St.
Springfield , Vermont
05156
Tel: 802-885-2839 

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