Blue-flowered H.'St. Bernadette'

[waldo]

Has anyone heard anything about this hosta. There were pictures posted on another forum in August 2010 about this hosta, http://www.hostahybridizers.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=102. With additional info on Don Rawson's Hosta List, http://www.hostalists.org/hosta_list_blflw.php. With a picture by Jerry Bryant on the back cover of The Hosta Online Journal volume 41 Fall 2010. http://www.americanhostasociety.org/Pub ... Back05.htm. and http://americanhostasociety.org/AHSMemb ... kCover.htm I was just wondering if this hosta is now lost or still somewhere in a backyard.

[Don Rawson]

No, it is not lost. There are a few people who have it in their collection. But I'm not sure that anyone is using it in their hybridizing program and have not heard of any plans to have it tc'ed.

[Pieter]

Don, below is what you posted in a thread on another forum.

John Soucek of Avon, Ohio emailed me the following information on 5-11-12:

"I noticed your article on the flower color with the pics from Jerry Bryant- the hosta pictured will be registered as 'St. Bernadette' and was hybridized by my daughter. The color is true-blue as the sky and so is the scape. My daughter is a graduate of Miami Ohio in Botany and had the same professor as Kevin Vaughan. We are also patenting the plant as well as doing our own tc. The marketing of the plant is up in the air for now. It is fertile both ways."

A quick check of Hosta Registrar shows no registration for the cv in question, I didn't bother with a patent search. I speculate that with John Soucek's passing the original course of action was let go, unfortunate but understandable. Let's hope John's daughter picks up these issues again...

[Chris_W]

It is too bad that a plant like this isn't more readily available. It sure would be interesting for hybridizers to work with, but with today's hosta market it would be difficult to get it into production and probably too expensive to bother with a patent.

The two hostas I grow that have bluish flowers are Lederhosen and the plant tissue cultured and sold as Oshima Silk (long story about that one, but the plant tissue cultured and sold as Oshima Silk wasn't the same plant that was registered). Last summer I had Oshima Silk in our production area and swore they had blue flowers. But I just wasn't sure so I would take people in and they just stopped dead in their tracks and wanted to know what the blue flowered hosta was. So to make sure even more I took one to the Michigan Hosta Society auction in August and sure enough, right away someone walked up and wanted to know about the blue flowered hosta (Oshima Silk will be in our 2017 catalog).

So blue is definitely a possibility in other hostas and with some work there might be more

Chris

[Pieter]

Don't suppose you have any pix of the flowers, Chris?

[Chris_W]

Here is a picture, but blue is a hard color to catch I think. All the pictures still look purple but I swear they looked blue in person.

[Linda P]

I definitely see blue tones in that, Chris. I have a couple of seedlings that I see more blue in than others. Like you, I am never quite sure if there is actually as much blue there as I think I see.

[Chris_W]

Thanks for checking it out Linda. I kept asking people over and over what they thought, and so many people caught their breath when they saw these in person.

But out in the growing area they just blended in with the rest of the crowd of plants so we never really noticed it. Lederhosen was like that too, where it would depend on lighting and presentation.

This plant started out as a huge disappointment for me because it wasn't the plant I was expecting and had been excited about it. Fortunately I didn't throw them out. I can be a bit of a hosta purist and almost did.

[waldo]

Just ordered one of your nearly blue Oshima Silk (Shimizu 09) hosta Chris, you talked me into it.

[Chris_W]

Thank you for the order, Waldo. I didn't know I was twisting your arm, so hopefully it wasn't too much

[Bill Meyer]

Hi All,

St. Bernadette was actually TCed by Jon's daughter Rachel, who started up a TC lab then apparently abandoned it after a couple years and doesn't respond to inquiries. Word is that the plants all died. There are still some OS pieces out there, but I've heard that the flowers weren't that color in other years. Pretty strange if true.

That color in the photos is possible in hostas. It comes from an anthocyanin pigment called delphinidin, which as you may expect is found in delphiniums. A chinese study of pigments in hosta flowers of 80 different cultivars found 8 different anthocyanins in various colors from blue to a crimson red. Some hostas only had one pigment while others had up to 8 and anything in between. St. Bernadette could then have only delphinidin.

.......Bill Meyer

[Chris_W]

Waldo, your question about Oshima Silk has been moved to a new thread.