MyHostas Weblog

“I’m Surfer Dude! I’m Surfer Dude!”
“Hey, Surfer Dude, we love you!”

Sometimes a hosta comes out of the blue and makes a lasting impression. This is what happened with ‘Surfer Dude‘ (Tony Avent NR). Offered this year for the first time by Plant Delights, this hybrid is the result of the unusual cross rupifraga x plantaginea made by Tony in 1994. Also unusual in this TC era is the fact that the hosta is only available as originator’s stock (OS). Way to go! According to the description it has upright leaves that arch outwards like a giant wave, hence it’s name. 

 

 

As the leaves emerge, they are glaucous above and powdery below. This is a bit strange for a cross of rupifraga and plantaginea as both parents have glossy leaves. The leaves have good substance and an interesting serrated edge.

 

 

In September it showed it’s large flowers, nicely striped purple and white. The flowers didn’t open very wide, some of them didn’t open at all, but the ones that opened had a pleasant fragrant smell.

 

 

For breeding purposes, you don’t expect a lot of fertility for a cross like this. In fact the stamen were very short and didn’t produce any pollen. The pistil was sticking out of the flower and I tried a few crosses without much hope. They didn’t produce any seeds.

For me ‘Surfer Dude’ is one of the best introductions of 2006.

surf (n.) - 1685, probably from earlier suffe (1599), of uncertain origin. Originally used in reference to the coast of India, hence perhaps of Indic origin. Or perhaps a phonetic respelling of sough, which meant “a rushing sound.” The verb meaning “ride the crest of a wave” is from 1917; surfer, surfing both from 1955. In the Internet sense, first recorded 1993.

dude - 1883, “fastidious man,” New York City slang of unknown origin, later applied to city slickers, especially Easterners vacationing in the West (dude ranch first recorded 1921). Surfer slang application to any male is first recorded c.1970. According to O.E.D., female form is dudine.

- Online Etymology Dictionary -

This has been on my mind for a long time and now that the days get shorter and there is less to do in the garden, I’ve more time to spend at the computer. So I finally decided to to switch the blog software from b2evolution to WordPress. Without doubt b2evolution is a very powerful and complete blog software, but there were a few annoyances and development was slow. That’s also why I didn’t post an entry for the last 10 months.  The switch has been easy and the fact that it was possible to import my old entries into WordPress helped a lot. I also found a nice theme “Connections” to start with. Expect small changes to the look & feel of the weblog as I discover the possibilities of WordPress over the next months. Hope you like it.

Cleaning up my Favorites today, I found this old link to Afternic.com.
On their site you can buy or sell domain names. Couldn’t resist to check what domain names containing the word hosta are for sale. Leaving out non-hosta related ones like hostage and Idaho, I got:

Domain name	Asking($)
BlueHostA.com	600.00
GrowingHosta.com	600.00
GrowingHostas.com	600.00
HostaBulbs.com	600.00
HostaCatalogs.com	600.00
HostaDisease.com	850.00
HostaFerns.com	600.00
HostaFortunei.com	600.00
HostaPests.com	600.00
HostaRetail.com	600.00
HostaSeeds.com	600.00
HostasSeeds.com	600.00
PlantingHosta.com	600.00
HostaPlantaginea.com	600.00
HostaWholesale.com	600.00
PlantingHostas.com	600.00
TransplantingHostAs.com	600.00
WholesaleHostas.com	600.00
HostaDiseases.com	600.00
HostaFlower.com	600.00
HostaPictures.com	600.00
HostaFlowers.com	600.00
HostaPlanting.com	600.00
HostaVarieties.com	600.00
HostaSuppliers.com	600.00

Some probably not so hosta related:

Domain name	Asking($)
hostabusiness.com	999.00
HostaHelp.com	125,000.00
HostaKing.com	125,000.00

I wonder who wants to pay for a name like HostaDisease.com or HostaPests.com?

When I first saw this title from The Ann Arbor News I thought this must be a typo! Reading the whole story proved me wrong! Couldn’t resist to give a resume of the story:

A homeless guy suspected of stealing plants in Ypsilanti got caught “green-handed” when a police officer saw him carrying two plants and sweating profusely. He told the police that he was selling the plants for money. The guy was released because the jail is overcrowded!

The first reports of missing plants came in June, nearly 13 people reported missing plants from the area.

What baffled the police was that the thief grabbed plants right out of the ground without disturbing the rest of the landscape.

Greetings!

The Leaf-Chronicle has an article under the title:

 

Hosta gardening brightens local woman’s life   

which makes an interesting read about a woman’s love and passion for hostas. Only one quote:

“If you do not like the bloom, you can cut it off whenever you want, but it’s really best for the plant to let it bloom and set seeds, then it knows it’s done what it’s supposed to do.”

You can read the whole article (while it is available) by clicking on the link above.

Enjoy!

This one has been on my want list for a very long time, however it is easy to miss when not in flower. This time it was flowering and quite impressive.

H. ‘White Triumphator‘ has pure white flowers that are held horizontally on very long scapes. Although my plant is still young, it’s scape already reaches 100 cm. What I find special & quite attractive are the white flowering bracts that are covered with green veins. It reminds me of a Freesia, without the smell of course!

 

 

 

 

    

The plant isn’t that spectacular, with upright leaves that have very glaucous backs. The scape is also very glaucous. Here is a picture of my new plant:

 

 

 

 

    

Hosta ‘White Triumphator’ is listed as an introduction from the famous Dutch garden designer and nursery man Piet Oudolf. Piet has also written a number of garden books. It is described as a selection of rectifolia with very tall scapes of pure white flowers. The rectifolia background clearly shows in the upright habit and the long scape.

There is also a hosta ‘White Tachi‘ in cultivation, Tachi Giboushi being the Japanese name of rectifolia. As I don’t have it, it remains to be seen if it’s the same plant as ‘White Triumphator’ or a different one.

 

 

 

 

‘White Triumphator’ in the Danny Van Eechaute garden    

These are the fragrant flowers of ‘Essence of Summer‘ (Jan van den Top & Marco Fransen 2004). It is a tetraploid conversion of ‘Warwick Essence‘ (Gil Jones 1993).  At the start of the nineties ‘Warwick Essence’ was a hybridizing breakthrough, being the cross of ‘Northern Halo‘ (a sieboldiana ‘Elegans’ type) and plantaginea. It isn’t the easiest cross to make because of the different flowering periods. Gil succeeded, the result being a hosta with substance and fragrance, a “fragrant sieboldiana”.

To even further improve it’s substance and maybe it’s fragrance, ‘Warwick Essence’ was artificially converted to the tetraploid ‘Essence of Summer‘. It has very thick leaves on strong petioles. Best of all, the flowers are still fragrant, a bit larger and have more substance. This is the first fragrant tetraploid I’ve seen, although I’ve heard some rumors about a tetraploid ‘Fragrant Bouquet‘.

We’ll have to see if it’s pod and/or pollen fertile, I tried some tetraploid pollen on it. In the morning the anthers were still closed, so I had to come back in the afternoon to collect the pollen.

‘Essence of Summer‘  

Last Saturday the fishing season has started for me! A lot of hostas are just emerging, but I was charmed by this sport of ‘Cat’s Eyes’. A small fish to catch, it has five small noses, none of them looking like the original. One is the reverse sport, a few others are streaked.

 

 

  

The biggest garden event of 2004, Pacific Flora 2004, was held near Lake Hamana, Shizuoka prefecture in Japan. There were millions of flowers from some 6000 species, including some hostas.

I found a site that has 6 pages with nice pictures of the hostas, although some(like ‘Striptease’) are wrongly named. I like the pictures of the Japanese species and cultivars, especially a golden rupifraga, a variegated tsushimensis, ‘Hodeyama’, ‘Tama-no-Yuki’, ‘Yoko’ and kiyosumiensis ‘Sakuratsugi’. Wish they were available over here.

Here are the links:page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 page 6

http://www.sardi.sa.gov.au/pages/horticulture/pathology/pdf/os_ornamentals.pdf

While searching I stumbled on some references to this relatively “new” fungal disease, that was first discovered on potted hostas. Some investigating was done into the circumstances that stimulated the development of Fusarium hostae.

(more…)