H. 'Revolution'

Another new one for us in 2005. What was so eye-catching to me on this one is the pattern of variegation. It'll be a little hard to see what caught my eye in Hosta 'Revolution'these first few pictures while the plants get an opportunity to establish themselves. Particularly noticeable in this back lit picture is the irregular veining in the leaf, somewhat reminiscent of what you see in 'Striptease'. Hosta Library has it listed on Lemke as a sport of 'Loyalist', registered in 2000, which in turn is a sport of 'Patriot'. In the same file it is described as being spots and splotches on dark green foliage with cream center and then a little further down it is listed as a leaf with green speckling on a white center with a wide green margin. Certainly the majority of pictures they have show the latter, the early leaves we have here show the former. It'll be interesting to see how things develop over the growing season.

Certainly for an suburban garden such as ours where space is limited, it makes an ideal plant with a relatively compact size of 16-18" in height.

A few days later you can see the first signs of the spots and splotches. We'll have to wait and see if the centers turn white -though there's no indication in the Hosta Library description that it's an albescent sport.

Here we are, a scant 6 weeks since the first picture shown was taken and see how far along this root has come. It's developing nicely and I cannot wait for it to properly mature to show off it's beauty.

Hosta 'Revolution'No sign of flower stalks as yet by the middle of June, just great, vigorous growth for its first year. Here's hoping it'll pick up next year where it left off this year and perhaps even flower for us.

I might have been impressed by 'Revolution's vigour last year, but 2006 looks better yet. It must like where it is because the size of the unfurling leaves look to be quite substantially larger than last year's, plus there are double the shoots, you gotta like that! The vigour it is displaying shouldn't come as a surprise given its lineage: 'Loyalist' out of 'Patriot'; we're seeing very similar vigour out of 'Patriot' and its relative 'Minute Man' both of which have shown great growth where-ever we have them planted.

Notice how this year the variegation shows white, whereas last year it was much more creamy.

By mid July both 'Revolution' and 'Minute Man' are in full bloom and horror of horrors, manual sex was performed going both ways!! I'd rip the stamens out of a 'Minute Man' flower and liberally rub the anthers across the awaiting 'Revolution' stigma. Once satisfied there is good pollen coverage the process gets done the other way where 'Minute Man' receives 'Revolution' pollen. I can see seedpods developing, particularly on the 'Revolution' scapes, and it will be interesting to see how many seeds we actually get, never mind sprouting them in the spring - no, I don't want to bother with them indoors over the winter, just much too much trouble and not enough space. I'll hold off until next spring and start them outdoors, sheltered and in a topped, clear container of sorts. I have some hinged, clear plastic containers I've been saving from the Hothouse Tomatoes we buy that look as if they'd do just fine.

While there were seeds in all the pods I collected, only the most heavily variegated one was saved for sprouting spring '07. From what I have gathered, the pods that are mostly white will likely produce seedlings that are mostly white as well. Those aren't terribly viable, so why bother even sprouting those seeds.

And indeed, most of them were white, and never developed much beyond the first leaf, but a few had sufficient green on them to allow for proper photo synthesis and a modicum of growth. However, I don't think any of these will come up again next year, but what the heck, it's worth a try. There are also a couple of interesting all green seedlings, they show much more vigour.

There's a modicum of green here, I'll keep my fingers crossed.

One of the handful of green ones still left shows a subtle yet quite distinct outline of a variegation!

The largest of the three 'Revolution' plants we have was getting a little too big for the spot it occupied, plus it was starting to develop an all green leaf. So, time to lift and divide. With the size of the plant it was unavoidable that some leaves would pay the price. Of these three you see here the one on the far left was broken off right at the crown, the other two higher up. All three were dipped in rooting hormone and planted in Promix BX, a soilless medium, and for good measure the far left one was 'bagged' to aid with transpiration. This was all done on June 24th and after 30 days or so we'll see how well we did in terms of developing roots on these leaves. I have called this technique/procedure 'ROSTONIZING', after the gentleman who first brought this to light.

I'm afraid however that this experiment was a complete bust, all I ended up doing was rotting the end of the petioles. The divisions are doing fine however and one of them ended up going to a lady in Taber, AB, as part of a secret trade in early August.

I noticed in 2007 that one of our 'Revolution' divisions was developing an all-green shoot. Here it is shown in June of 2008 and it is obviously rather vigorous, seeing how it towers over the variegated portion of the plant. This however is not a reversion, but a sport. If it were a reversion it would have reverted back to 'Loyalist' which is similarly variegated but does not have the spotting/stippling in the white. Follow along with me: 'Revolution' came out of 'Loyalist' which came out of 'Patriot' which came out of 'Francee' which came out of 'Fortunei Hyacinthina' and out of that long lineage the only solid coloured one is the last one. And this green sport doesn't much look like 'Fortunei Hyacinthina'. Since this first occurence I have seen another two and after some discussions with fellow Hostaholics on a couple of forums it would appear as if this is not at all uncommon. A lot of folks will simply cut out the green portion and discard it. Me, I'm hanging on to mine and I call this my 'Green Revolution'. With the number of sports out of 'Revolution' itself, I cannot wait to see if my new all-green sport will lead to yet more, variegated sports.

Hugo's Database provides some more details about this variety, including derivative sports.

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Pages last updated 28 November 2018