Some of these are significant
- the changeover from field-grown divisions and a 10-year investment before releasing a new cultivar to the wham-bam-thankyoumam world of tissue culture. -the changeover from deciding which of the 40 or so available varieties to use in a particular spot to the "which of the 5000 will I decide to grow" world of hostas.
Others were less so.
- who still has BAP-10 on their garden chemical shelf? (BAP 10 can force some plant to develop rapidly... in hostas, it would make some varieties develop more eyes, "awakening" dormant eyes. Of course, in most cases, this really turned out to function like the national budget, spending next year's revenue this year. But I've got an expensive reminder of the craze on my shelf...
so... in the late 80s H. yingeri was discovered. As you know, the small y means that yingeri is a species, a plant that occurs naturally "in the wild." In brief, it has roundish shiny leaves, a smallish clump, and its most distinctive quality is probably its narrow-petaled purple flowers. (They kind of remind me of the difference between a regular daylily bloom and a spider daylily.)
For a while, yingeri was all the rage. Everybody had to have one. I'm sure lots of folks here have one somewhere in their garden. Nice plant - but nothing too special except when it flowers and you can show it off.
But the introduction to the market of a new-found species has its biggest effect through breeding. Yingeri got crossed with everything imaginable.
(scenario - yingeri as a fresh-faced contestant on American Idol, makes a big splash, then gets thrown into the dog-eat-dog of competitive hostadom, runs with the current brat-pack of star-du jours, having sex with a different hosta every night... then finds itself sitting in the dark, scotch in one hand, cigarette in the other hand, asking "is that all there is??")
Often the shininess of the leaves and the spidery flowers were traits yingeri passed on the the offspring. Which brings us to today's NPOTD.
'Sweet Tater Pie' is the result of crossing 'Golden Scepter', the all gold sport of 'Golden Tiara', with 'yingeri'. It's a Tony Avent release, which you might have guessed from the quirky, and very Southern, name. Though it turns green by midsummer, in the spring SWP is a really bright spot in the garden. Though it fits well with a food-themed bed, you don't hear a lot about STP these days.
Hosta Registry - http://www.hostaregistrar.org/detail.ph ... ater%20Pie
MyHostas - http://myhostas.be/db/hostas/Sweet+Tater+Pie
Hosta Library - http://www.hostalibrary.org/s/sweettp.html
When Matt (Gibbscorner) visited last week, he was drawn to it... as often happens, a new set of eyes helps us see something in our garden afresh that we have just grown accustomed to.
Frankly, STP doesn't photograph well, which is why I went into all the background detail.
first, in its setting with another bright spring plant, 'Orange Marmalade' and following counter-clockwise, 'Fujibotan' (small green), 'Lakeside Prissy Miss', and 'Aardvark'... and second, a poor attempt to capture the character of STP
so I will look at them when I get home, but I just had to tell you how much I love reading anything you write JGH 
You could tell a story about mucking dookey and it would make me laugh 
