RE: Fire and Ice vs Loyalist

Jim:

>Minuteman and Patriot are mixed up in the trade with many plants
>sold as Patriot being Minuteman.

Hope I don't start another debate here, but two years ago you sent me 
some Patriot and Minuteman along with some Patriot that reverted back 
to Francee.  When I look at the Patriot and Minutman plants I can't 
tell which is which without looking at the label.  As to the occurance 
of the Patriot sport I have found several Francee that sported to the 
Patriot form.  As a matter of fact I have one growing in a pot of 
several Francee right now that probably will be a Patriot when it 
matures.   I also have a Francee that appears to have sported to a 
much larger sized plant, at least twice as big, but also has some of 
the Partiot look.  At first glance you might think it had sported from 
Partiot.  You don't have to propagate too many Francee to get the 
Partiot form.  I'm watching one of these sports now as it seems that 
it has the Partiot look, but the leaves are more narrow.  Will have to 
wait and see what it looks like next year before saying anything.

I've also been having a hard time figuring out just which is the true 
Whirlwind.  I have several plants that pretty much look like 
Whirlwind, but yet when you look at them side by side you see small 
but distinct differences.  What I am trying to do now is to see if 
these are stable.  I also selected one plant that appears much like 
Whirlwind, but seems to have a bolder look to it.  The center is much 
larger and the color is cleaner.  Again, I'll have to wait until next 
year to see if it is stable or not.

I'm beginning to think that a lot of the sports we see in Hostas is 
probably the result of transposible elements.  Since the same sports 
seem to appear over and over it would appear that these transposible 
elements have favorable locations where they like to reside.  I 
suspect that these transposible elements don't always end up in the 
exact same location in different sports, so we see the major effect, 
but there can also be some very minor differences between the 
different sports depending on exactly where the transposible element 
is.

With Ben's access to research equipment it would be possible to do 
some studies to test some of these ideas.  It's just too bad Ben can't 
figure out how to do it.

>For H. Elegans it is so bad that we now assume that there is no 
>variety called Elegans.

This general problem is also a big problem with lilies.  At one time 
there was a strain of trumpet lilies called Pink Perfection.  It 
wasn't pink and it was far from prefection, but the name sold plants. 
Today, just about any pinkish/mauve trumpet is called Pink Perfection. 
There was also a strain of white trumpets with dark buds called Black 
Dragon that was impressive.  Today, you get all kinds of junk trumpets 
called Black Dragon just because they are white with a dark bud.

Joe Halinar

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