Green Eye on Dick Ward

[Patrushka]

I was out watering and noticed some solid green leaves on Dick Ward. It has one green eye, of course, towards the center. Is there a named green sport of Dick Ward?

[Chris_W]

Hi Pat,

At http://myhostas.be it lists one name for the solid green sport of Hosta 'Dick Ward'. It has the odd name of Hosta 'Dick's Green Carpet', named by Van Wade. Somehow there has to be a story behind that one

This sport seems to be somewhat common. I have 3 clumps of Dick Ward here and one is perfect while the other two are showing lots of half and half solid green leaves along with some solid green eyes. I guess this one could be like Paradigm where it likes to send out solid green sports...

[viktoria]

I also have a solid green eye on DW and consider it to be of no value. Van Wade seems to name a lot of these solid greens, perhaps hoping that some of them will develop to show some merit.

Viktoria

[Patrushka]

Thanks Chris. I thought it might be a named sport. I wonder what the story is behind the name. Is Dick Ward named for the baseball pitcher who played for the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals in 1934 and 1935 or someone else? Maybe the Green Carpet is the baseball diamond.

Thanks Viktoria. I know what you mean but I sort of like the bumples on the leaves. I really don't want to dig up my Dick Ward to separate it though.

[Chris_W]

Hi,

I would wait until next spring to separate it, if that is what you decide, cause you would hate to lose any of it if you have to make some drastic cuts.

Funny thing is, we moved Dick Ward from our old place in the fall of 2004 and they never really grew for about 4 years. Mind you, I could never grow Zounds either, which is what this is from, so this didn't surprise me. Our pH here is sky high compared to our old place so we've been working sulfur into the soil to lower the pH. This can take years to actually work, but in the past two years my few clumps of Dick Ward have finally started to quit sleeping and start leaping. This summer several people stopped and asked what it was, so I know that finally they are starting to look nice. Eventually I'll divide these up and offer them again, and when I do I'll probably end up with just as many solid green "Dick's Green Carpet" as I will Dick Ward. I'll likely grow them big and sell them cheap.

[flowerchild59]

I have about one third of my dick ward is the solid green. I don't have the gumption to dig it and divide. I think my dick ward is at least 10 years old. I always wonder what makes it start to change after so many years of not throwing an odd eye. I do like the sported eye though. It has lots of texture and holds up well all summer and way into fall.

[renaldo75]

Pat - Dick Ward is a hosta hybridizer [and a good friend of Van Wade's]. This year he was awarded the Alex Summers Distinguished Merit award at the MN convention.

[Patrushka]

Thanks Reldon. I didn't find anything about hosta hybridizers when I googled Dick Ward. Now that I know that Dick Ward is a hosta hybridizer, I typed that into my google search and I got results.

[renaldo75]

Pat - if you want to see what Dick's registered hostas are, go to the Hosta Library.
Click on 'Hosta Reg.' at the lower right side [in red next to Hugo's Database].
The Registrar's page comes up in a new window.
Click on 'Search' and then enter 'd. & j. ward' in the Hybridizer [OINR] box & click on 'search'
You will come up with 11 pages of their hostas. And another 4 hostas if you put in just 'd. ward'.

Dick has been around quite a while and you'll see that he's worked with Kevin Vaughn and others.
When he was being introduced as the Alex Summers award winner, Chuck Zdeb said Van Wade
had submitted 50 pages of material to show that he was worthy of the award.

A lot of his hostas are not that well known but others are in the trade.
'Winsome', 'T Rex', 'Thumbelina', 'Pixie Vamp', 'Midnight Sun', 'Great Lakes Gold',
'Chain Lightning', 'Dawes', 'Fat Cat', 'Alice Gladden', 'Am I Blue', 'Amazing Grace'
I can't remember which hosta he selected as his 'best' which is part of the award.

He was in the pre-TC era and a lot of his hostas were most likely introduced for
sale by Handy Hatfield. [Since one of Dick's hostas is named 'Handy Hatfield'.]
So I'm sure the divisions went for high prices 'back in the day'. I got to hear Bob Solberg
talking [privately] about how that system worked. Only a select few were on the 'list' of
people to be able to get a division of new hostas that were hybridized by the Lachmans,
Mildred Seaver, etc. And how high you were on the list determined how large the single
division you received was. Fascinating stuff. And totally foreign to those of us who
came along after TCs had taken over.