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I don't remember where I read it, but I once saw a description of 'Elegans'
that said, essentially, that it pretty much comes true from seed.
I would bet that there have been, through ignorance or indifference, many,
many 'Elegans' sold that were raised from seed. Not so long ago,
before TC, it was really hard to produce a large number of 'Elegans' quickly,
and it wouldn't surprise me if a few growers did it the easy way.
Chick
Bill Meyer wrote:
Bill Meyer's recent post in its last paragraph refers
to the origin of sieboldiana 'Elegans'. I have always understood
it to be a hybrid raised in about 1910 by Georg Arends in Wuppertal, thought
to have been tokudama and sieboldiana. Are we now to amend this 'fact'?
I do not have references in literature to back this up. I would,
of course, agree that the 'line' has been infiltrated with seedlings so
that plants offered for sale show widely different mature characteristics.I
suppose that somewhere there may be pieces of the original plant. What
do you think? Roger Bowden. Hi
Roger, You've
got me there. I had it in my head that 'Elegans' was originally a cross
involving sieboldiana and fortunei, which would be something different.
I went to Schmid's "The Genus Hosta" to do my homework and found that you
are right. The original cross made by Arends was sieboldiana x sieboldiana
var. fortunei. The latter plant is today called 'Tokudama'. Arends named
this plant fortunei 'Robusta'. It was renamed sieboldiana 'Elegans' by
Hylander in 1954. Schmid mentions in his book that in the course of his
research into this plant he located a 'Robusta' that was "received directly
from Arends and growing at the Staudensichtungsgarten, Weihenstephen near
Freising, Bavaria, Germany". This would then be the original to compare
others to. I have no doubt that if studies were made, many different
plants would be found bearing name 'Elegans' and for this reason
caution those describing sports of sieboldiana 'Elegans' as being from
the same plant. It is highly likely that many of the sieboldiana sports
s
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