Hallson Gardens

Hi, I'm totally ignorant when it comes to hybridizing, and am just starting to plant hosta seeds. My question regards hosta Revolution. Mine keeps reverting. In the case of this photo, instead of sporting a new green eye, the leaves are reverting and some are streaked. There are more than one eye in this pot. If I used seed from this plant as a parent, would it take on the traits of an all green hosta, or unknown? Or, is this a totally bad idea? Sorry if I am not wording this correctly, but I'm just learning about hybridizing. Thanks

I'd try the seeds -- they may or may not give you anything but green, but you never know. Technically only "streaked" pod parents are supposed to throw streaked or variegated seedlings, but that rule is often disproved by streakers coming from variegated -- or in the case of one of my own variegated productions -- from a solid gold pod parent. If you have the room to experiment, go for it -- the experiment itself is worth the effort. Phyllis

Forgot to add -- next spring I'd separate the variegated part of that hosta from the all-green part, so that it doesn't eventually lose its variegation entirely. Phyllis

sweetee wrote:Mine keeps reverting. In the case of this photo, instead of sporting a new green eye, the leaves are reverting and some are streaked.

Your 'Revolution is NOT reverting, it's sporting, which is quite common with 'Revolution'. For it to be reverting it would have to start looking like what it came from originally, which in this case is 'Loyalist'. Take a look at the pix of 'Loyalist' on HL and you'll see it looks nothing like what you are seeing with your 'Revolution'.

I have tried seeds from 'Revolution' pods and got mostly all-green seedlings -quite vigorous- and a handful of very cute looking green speckled white ones which were doomed to failure since there wasn't enough chlorophyl in the leaves for proper photosynthesis. The green ones grow up to look very much like the all-green sport you're seeing, and both the sport and the seedlings are very good growers.

Phyllis is quite right about separating the variegated shoots from the all-green ones next spring, with 'Revolution' I have to remove green shoots at least every 2nd year in order to keep a nicely variegated plant. And don't just toss the all-green shoots, they do make a nice plant in their own right, I call mine 'Green Revolution', but that's just a garden name, not an official one.

Pieter