Anyone growing the "tini" series of Hostas from Q & Z?

[Chris_W]

Hi there,

Q & Z Nursery introduced a new series of plants this year that all have "tini" in the name, like Appletini, Limetini, Azuretini, Citratini, etc., etc., ad nauseum. I saw pictures of the flowers on one of the bluish ones that looked very attractive, but I don't recall which it was and keep wondering if these are all just a bunch of random seedlings without any real merits or if any are really worth growing. I can appreciate the desire to market plants with a "theme", but I'd personally rather have one or two really superb plants to grow rather than a whole series of random seedlings. Other hybridizers have done things like this in the past and I've had some disappointments where I've paid lots of money for plants that seemed to only have been introduced in order to advertise something "new".

So do any of you grow any of these yet? If so, do you think any are worth growing?

[redcrx]

I have not grown them. I saw little ones for sale and passed on them. The name seemed gimmicky to me.

The database lists one called Rotini that I would be interested in by its heritage.

[Shenandoah]

I have seen these plants popping up. They actually annoy me. I really dont think they have anything unique to offer and there is soooo many of them....I think I would pass.

[viktoria]

...all have "tini" in the name, like Appletini, Limetini, Azuretini, Citratini, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

One "tini" would be enough for me. Did not order any, though.

Viktoria

[Chris_W]

I could see trying to introduce something like this one or two plants at a time, and making sure each one was truly something special to encourage adding others as they come out. Now I don't even have a clue how many they pushed out or how many are yet to come and from the responses here it seems like there really isn't much interest in them either. If I knew that one or another was a standout that was desirable on its own merits I would buy it, but I'm not going to try all of them to find that diamond in the rough.

Thanks for the replies.

Chris

[JoshS]

I have not seen any of these in person, but the pictures were enough to make me pass. I feel as you do, Chris...the mediocre plants were introduced to create a catchy themed line of plants to sell, not because the plants are great. I have yet to be impressed by any of the recently introduced hybrids developed at Q&Z.

[ViolaAnn]

I just took a look at them and the only one that would make me the least bit interested is 'Lemontini', mostly because I don't have a lot of yellow in my garden.

[ogrefcf]

The couple I looked at both looked like my Golden Eger. Maybe just bad pictures, but just a meh from me.

[GrannyNanny]

Never heard of them until your post, Chris. It sounds like a gimmicky nothing to me -- as you say, just a bunch of random seedlings looking for a market. I've been burned once or twice by ordering a plant that is a new introduction, only to find that they've introduced it far too soon to really know what it is going to do or look like when mature. You can't really tell until the plant is at least five years old -- and I can attest to that by the several hostas that I've grown from seed that I provisionally called "small yellow hosta", only to find that the fourth year it grew out of all knowledge and wound up being a LARGE yellow hosta. Phyllis

[Trudy]

Ditto what Josh said!

[Lessadragon]

I got a couple of them because I felt as you do Chris. I was hesitant to order them all because I feared they were just 'gimmick' plants. I do, however, like Lemontini so far. It has a really nice shade of yellow with a bit of a bloom to it. I'm looking forward to seeing it next year. Appletini hasn't done much for me so far. Those are the only two that I tried.

Lynn

[jgh]

I wonder if they were trying to capitalize on the sales they got on Cerveza and Mojito - the yellow and green solid sports (culls) from Avocado. I really like the parent plant, so I kept one of each of these and they've proven to be pretty good plants... grow pretty fast, tolerate a lot of sun, have the same great fragrant flowers as all of the rest of the Guacamole clan, lots of substance from the tetraploid heritage.

Still - I think people bought more for the names than the quality of the plants - especially as we really hadn't seen any mature plantw when we bought them. So when I saw the tini names I suspected they would have the plantaginea-Fragrant Bouquet-Guacamole heritage - nope! Just some seedlings - though I guess I wouldn't call it random as appletini does have an interesting heritage...

I passed on these...