In the spring and summer of 2022, we launched a very tedious, time consuming, eye straining but rewarding project to identify the genetic lineage of many thousands of cultivars in our database. As with anything related to hostas, most of the process was very straight forward while a few aspects were complicated and tricky.

We looked at our data and found that around 400 plants were involved in the creation of 3 or more new hostas each which accounted for several thousand named cultivars. There were over 1,000 more hostas that were involved in the creation of only 1 or 2 new cultivars. It soon became apparent that dealing with the second group would have to wait. The time involved in going through thousands of database records one at a time and creating new results pages needed to be spread out.

Major emphasis was placed on highly productive plants such as 'Sieboldiana', 'Fortunei', 'Dorothy Benedict', Hosta montana, 'Frances Williams',  'Elegans', 'Tokudama' and a few hundred others that are in the genetic background of the vase majority of hosta cultivars in the world today.

For each of the plants in the 400, we went back into their ancestry until we reached a species or an "Unknown" parent deadend. For example, all hostas such as 'Halcyon' included in the famous Tardiana Group and all of their descendants have 'Tardiflora', Hosta longipes lancea, Hosta longipes, 'Elegans', 'Fortunei', 'Tokudama' and 'Sieboldiana' in their background.

• 'Tardiflora' is a seedling of Hosta longipes lancea which is a sport of the species Hosta longipes.
   

• 'Elegans' is, according to The Hostapedia, a hybrid of 'Sieboldiana' and either 'Fluctuans' or 'Tokudama'.

So, we needed to enter these 5 cultivars and species into each record of related plants so that a search would bring all of the plants with, say, 'Sieboldiana' in their background into one list. In the case of 'Sieboldiana' which may have a thousand of related plants (and others with 100 or more), we also divided the results into 24 alphabetical pages by first name of the related cultivar.

Resolving Conflicts and Confusion -  In some cases, there is either confusion or contradiction in what is reported as the parentage of a cultivar. Sometimes the parent is incorrectly recorded

As noted above, one primary example is 'Elegans' which is in the genetic background of over a thousand cultivars. According to The Hostapedia, it is a hybrid of 'Sieboldiana' and either 'Fluctuans' or 'Tokudama' while most people think it is a sport of the former species Hosta sieboldiana which was changed to a cultivar, 'Sieboldiana'.

To address these issues, we have decided to rely on four highly reputable sources.

1. The Hostapedia written by world renowned hosta expert Mark Zilis and published in 2009. Mark offers his opinion on several issues and we feel that is good enough for us.

2. The Genus Hosta written by W. George Schmid and published in 1991. This book was the most in-depth study of the genus, Hosta.

3. The Hosta Registrar's database which is the official registry of the description and genetic background of hosta cultivars.

4. The Hosta Journal of The American Hosta Society.

Hostas are produced in one of two ways like all other plants. Most are produced sexually from the combination of pollen with the ovary to produce a seed. This produces an offspring that is the genetic mixture of two plants or the result of self-pollination when both pollen and ovary are on the same plant. Even then, there is a "scrambling" of the genes so that the offspring are different from the parent plant. The offspring are called hybrids.

The other way hostas are produced occurs when there is a mutation of some sort in a plant which results in part of the plant changing physical traits. One spring, a green leaf hosta emerges from the ground with one set of leaves that has a yellow marginal variegation. Or, in the tissue culture propagation process, a few of the thousands of new plants which are clones of the mother plant mutate into something new and different. These offspring are called sports.