Hosta seedlings

In 2010 I took a number of OP 'Sea Octopus' pods and liberally sprinkled them over a few containers with a soilless mix. As you see, they came up thick as thieves. Many of them were non-descript green seedlings, but there were enough that had potential to be something a little different that they were worth saving and transplanting rather then assigning them to the compost bin.

A total of 10 were selected, 6 greens, 3 yellows and a blue.

The seedlings from 2010 you see to the left was the typical crap shoot you expect with open-pollinated seeds: who's your Daddy? The vast majority were culled at the 4-6 leaf stage and, as said, only ten were grown on into 2011. Among that lot were 3 seedlings that showed to be lutescent, with this one here below to be the most exciting one. It's the biggest of the three, actually flowered this year, and shows early signs of the undulating leaf edges you see so clearly on the parent plant.

The flower is quite a bit lighter in colour than the pod parent.

Since there weren't any other hostas in bloom around the parent plant when it bloomed, I'm making the leap that this quite possibly is selfed. None of the three lutescent seedlings have the reddish petioles of the parent or the all-green siblings and it'll be very interesting to see how well the wavy edge holds into 2012.

I have already assigned a tentative name to this cultivar, meet Hosta 'Yellow Sea'.

By early October it shows a marvellous contrast between the veins and the tissue. It could well be that this proves to be one that shows really special for a few weeks late in the season. It's interesting to note that both the parent and the seedlings seem to have a long season in our garden. They still show quite nicely by mid October when for instance members of the Fortunei family are well on their way into senescence. And they are among the earlier ones to rise.

Alas, the best laid plans of mice and men do go awry sometimes, as they did in this case. The plant was lost in 2012 to root rot. I'll be seeding out another lot of 'Sea Octopus' OP seeds in 2014 in hopes of coming up with some more yellow seedlings.

In 2011 a number of crosses were attempted using a variety of different cultivars that have over lapping blooming periods. I used clausa var. normalis, sieboldii 'Alba', 'Hacksaw' and 'Ray of Hope'. Using the latter one was done to see if it was pollen fertile as it seems to be very hard to get it to set seed OP. Sure enough, it is pollen fertile. I ended up with a fair number of seedlings out of 'Hacksaw'/'Ray of Hope', sieboldii/'Ray of Hope', clausa/sieboldii as well as a goodly number of 'Hacksaw' OP seedlings. A number of these have done very nicely and have started to flower in 2013 with some interesting results.

To the right are three seedlings out of sieboldii and 'Ray of Hope'. The one on the left hand side has shown a peculiar distortion in its leaves, almost like folds along the length of the leaf. Don't think it's due to an environmental issue, could be a ploidy chimera. We'll see how it develops over time. Have been trying to come up with a name for it that reflects the odd nature of the leaves.

This close-up from early August 2013 gives a little better idea of what I'm talking about. Take a look for example at the leaves behind the developing scape. A lot of leaves also seem to be a-symmetrical, with one half having wider vein spacing than the other. If it proves to be genetic in nature I'm thinking the name 'Gnarly' would be appropriate.

And it isn't just the leaves that show unusual things, look at the flowers, the veining on the petals is looped and all the tepals veins seem to be rather deep or more pronounced in the center.

One of the 'Hacksaw' OP seedlings for example is a nice yellow with fairly dark purple buds, but the flowers have not opened, they whither on the scapes. A 'Hacksaw'/'Ray of Hope' seedling that caught my eye I have given the garden name 'Mawashibiki' and there's a nice yellow 'Hacksaw' OP seedling I call 'Yellowknife' -which you see here to the right, in August 2013-; both names were selected to reflect their heritage.