Re: hostas of course
- Subject: Re: hostas of course
- From: h*@open.org
- Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 22:37:37 -0700
Chris:
>So we are all out there buying TC's for cheap money. What are we
>getting. Admittedly there are some hostas that retained their
>qualities in TC but not all.
Using TC for propagating hostas produces lots of hostas cheaply, but
it is becoming obvious that many hostas just do not easily propagate
true to type. The TC plants are sent out as very small plants, but it
can take another year or two to figure out if the plants you have are
true to type. However, there is also another problem. Many people
who buy the TC starters place them into gallon pots or maybe smaller
pots and then move then up to gallon pots and all of this is being
done by minimum wage labors who are being supervised by people who
don't really know anything about hostas. To them the hosta in the pot
is a plant to be sold. When you look at these pots in the garden
centers you are impressed because they are loaded with fans. I
recently saw some gallon pots of Wide Brim that had 10-12 fans each,
for $4.95. When the average garden puts these into the garden the
plants are already way overcrowded.
The problem with propagating true to type hostas isn't limited to TC
plants. If you push standard techniques to the limit you can get just
as many off types as with TC. Francee and Whirwind are particularly
difficult to maintain. If you keep isolating the "off types" you can
eventually select out some superior types. For example, I have
several selections of Francee that are larger, have wider edges and
look a bit like Patriot. I also have some Patriots that I've been
selecting and reselecting and now have two plants that probably
qualify as being different enough to register. I have a selection of
Whirlwind that isn't as twisted as the normal form, but I have so many
other off types that I don't know what to do with.
Hostas sports that are simple histogenic layer switiching are easy to
understand, but I think there are two things happening with these
other off types. Some times when you are propagating hostas you will
find a plant that is clearly different. However, other times you look
at the plants and see something a little different, but maybe not easy
to see. If you take these plants and keep propagating them you will
eventually end up with a plant that looks similar to the original
plant, but otherwise be superior - maybe the substance is better or
the edge is wider.
It's my feeling that some hostas sport slowly and it's necessary to
keep reselcting to stablize these plants. When we do this by
traditional hosta propagation techniques we can pick out superior
forms. However, when hostas are TCed they are repeatly put back into
TC. At a certain stage of development it may be possible to see that
they are off types and a honest propagator will discard them, but many
off types may not be easy to detect. This is where I think some of
these weak growers are coming from.
These sports, other then the histogenic layer switching, are propably
the result of transposible elements jumping around. It's my belief
that some of these transposible elements jump to locations that cause
a significent change, but other transposible elements move about in
such a way that they don't have a dramatic effect. If you don't pay
attention to these changes you can easily end up with off types and
these off types are then propagated by other people who don't know
they have off types.
Joe Halinar
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