Question about Hosta 'Oshima Silk' parentage

[waldo]

Chris, I am sorry for the delay but when talking about "Oshima Silk" you said "long story about that one, but the plant tissue cultured and sold as Oshima Silk wasn't the same plant that was registered" I would be interested in any details of that long story that may be pertinent to my using this hosta in my breeding progam. I try to gather as much information and background on plants that I start with. One of the reasons that I find it disappointing when I see unknown or H. "X" x unknown listed for parentage of newly registered hostas.

Hosta Registry - http://hostaregistrar.org/detail.php?id ... ima%20Silk
MyHostas - http://myhostas.be/db/hostas/Oshima+Silk
Hosta Library - http://www.hostalibrary.org/o/oshimasilk.html

[Chris_W]

Hi Waldo,

Hosta 'Oshima Silk' is registered as a white edged seedling of Hosta pycnophylla by Mark Zilis/Q & Z Nursery that Mark acquired in Japan. The picture Mark used for marketing in the catalog and on the plant tags is this one:

oshima-silk-zilis.jpg (18.27 KiB) Viewed 3230 times

Clearly that is completely different from the plant that was actually introduced in tissue culture, which is this one:

For a while Mark insisted that the plant in tissue culture was the same as the first one pictured. I kept bugging them about it, wanting to know what in the world we were actually growing, and eventually Mark relented that the plant known as Oshima Silk out of tissue culture is not the same as what was registered. It was brought back from Japan and they don't have any idea what this is, or how it originated.

So unfortunately what is now sold as Hosta 'Oshima Silk' has absolutely no relationship to the plant that was registered as such. It clearly is not related to Hosta pycnophylla and the registration should be corrected to simply be unknown parentage.

Wish I could help more, but that's a bit more of the story.

Chris

[Tigger]

Wow. I didn't know this but do like "our" 'Oshima Silk'. This is a worse mess than Geisha/Ani Machi.

David

[waldo]

Thanks Chris, that is very helpful. It doesn't mean that I won't use it in my breeding plan, but it will help me to make correct decisions on what direction I go.

[redcrx]

Oshima Silk that I got from Chris this season.

Oshima Silk - June 28, 2017

[redcrx]

Here are some flower photos from yesterday.
A little bit of a "bell" shape:

Oshima Silk - July 25, 2017

Roughly straight-on:

Oshima Silk - July 25, 2017

and a little angle:

Oshima Silk - July 25, 2017

[waldo]

I also purchased an Oshima Silk from Chris last year and selfed one scape.I am attaching some pictures of the five seedlings that are the result of that selfing. They were sown on November 6, 2017 and as you can see they are very small (slow growing). I have no idea what the back ground may be.Keeping in mind that seedlings change, especially after they come out from under artifical light, I'm waiting to see if they grow on and show some pycnophylla characteristics. I think "things" sometimes happen in tissue culture that we don't understand. I have a H.'Snow Flakes' (that I have seedlings from) purchased from Jim's Hostas in 2014 that doesn't look like H.'Snow Flakes', it does have pure white flowers. I also have a H.'Claudia' purchased from White Oak Nursery in 2004 that is absolutely not H.'Claudia' and I suspect this was just a mix up/human error. With the 'Snow Flakes' could something have happened in tc? Both are reputable nurseries.

[druff]

you might want to get those in some new soil to perk them up. to combat algae i always sprinkle dry mix on the top to dry it up and block its light source. not being of pychnophylla parentage might be a plus if you want blue flowers. a high presence of the malvadin anthocyanin will probably push the flower towards purple lavendar

[waldo]

Thank you for your kind advice, I am going to pot these up individually today. I think that they do have pycnophylla in their background. I understand what you are saying about the blue flowers. With that in mind, how would you explain H.'Gilt by Association' with "near blue" flowers and being pycnophylla selfed? Perhaps recessive modifying gene/s? Thank you for all of your input.

[druff]

Not being a scientist I can only speculate. As a breeder I always have more questions than answers.
Is the expression of anthocyanin controlled by dominance?
Is it a lottery of what part of the plant a seedling wants to store its unique blend of anthocyanin?
By selection and perseverance I know I can increase my odds if a speculation is true
Do soil ph and temperature and how each person perceives color play a part?

It's something I ponder as I dab and dabble.
As one famous actor said. Do I feel lucky

additonal, its always helpful to look at what people know about other species/cultivars and figure out if hostas follow suit.
this suggests that purple anthocyanin is dominant. at least in this type of plant.
https://fastplants.org/pdf/activities/W ... -06web.pdf
the added fun is that hosta have 9 different flavors of anthocyanin
so for blue flowers one would think one would try to hit on a cross that has mostly Delphinidin anthocycanin without contamination by the other anthocyanins

[kHT]

Thanks Chris, isn't the name game so much fun. Keeping it all straight must be hard?
It appears that someone forgot to check the list of names that are registered before naming and selling
the product that they produced?