My Surprise Streaked Hosta Seedlings
Here is some pictorial proof that you don’t always have to have seeds from streaked hostas to end up with streaky seedlings. These little streaked beauties grew from seeds I had collected from a number of hostas… but none of those hostas were visibly streaked. I have also had many seedlings with variegated edges and some center variegation… again from seeds from solid color hostas. I wonder if it’s possible that each hosta has many more possibilities in its genes than the readily accepted ones and that when seedlings are culled early, many of these possibilities are never realized.
These seedlings are now just past two years old and have been very slow growing, but they have always been vigorous and healthy, so I think they will just be smaller hostas. I was thrilled when I first saw the hint of green and white variegation in their leaves, because it is supposedly extremely rare to get a streaked seedling from a solid color hosta. Actually, several of the seedlings in this group started out with leaves of two colors, and they really stood out against the rest of the all-green seedlings in the flat, but all the seedlings except these two lost their streakiness as they matured. These two stayed streaky and their colors have intensified. Both seedlings blossomed but did not produce seed pods this year, but that might have been because of the exceptionally wet summer that we had. I will really be interested to see if they eventually produce streaky seedlings themselves, and if they do, if the streakiness is a lasting one.
Written by Shirley | Filed Under Hosta, Plants in my Gardens, Voluntary Simplicity
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