HostALibrary.org is an image library of mature Hosta plants.
Title
HOSTA LIBRARY
Description
The customary method of writing binomial species names, i.e., the genus abbreviation followed by the species name (epithet), as in H. ventricosa, has been changed in the Hosta Library annotations to omit the genus abbreviation and is written with the species name only, as in ventricosa. Since the Hosta Library deals exclusively with the genus Hosta this method has been elected to facilitate sorting and for other good reasons. Users of the Hosta Library are advised that this foreshortened method is technically incorrect.
Most of the plants found here are what is known as "cultivars". All plants begin life as seedlings, but often hostas sport and become something new. A cultivar is a plant, either seedling or sport, that has been singled out and named for any reason. The word cultivar is short for "cultivated variety". If this plant is then propagated vegetatively (separated by division), all the resulting plants that came from it will be the same cultivar, unless it sports to something new. Seedlings from a cultivar will vary significantly and will not be the same plant. Even selected seedlings which appear to be identical do in fact have a different genetic make-up and are not the same, so they are not the named cultivar. Sometimes a cultivar can be variable, and differences in such things as margin width are common. Unless a trait is singled out and can be maintained as different, it does not become a new cultivar, just one type of a variable one.
Species are a different situation. They are groups of seedlings with clear points of similarity among themselves, but clear differences as a group from other species. It is important to know that the term species refers to a number of plants and not to an individual plant like a cultivar. Botanists frequently disagree as to where the dividing lines are when it comes to species, and even on exactly what the fine points of a definition of a species is. It does involve naturally propagating wild populations, some of which may no longer exist. Individuals from that population can vary quite a bit, and species examples found in the trade were often selected as being somehow attractive, not as being representative of the species. Seedlings of these that do not involve pollen from other species are also considered to be of the same species, however much they vary. Species are also broken down into a variety of subcategories, which follow similar rules.
Contact
- Robert Axmear
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- waukon Iowa
- United States 52172
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- +1.999999999
