Not Cathy's
Clown
Hosta cultivar names should be enclosed in single quotes (as in Hosta
'June'). The reason I didn't put the single quotes around Cathy's
Clown, is that the hosta currently being sold under this name is not
'Cathy's Clown'.
Although this imposter hosta originated here, I never sold or gave the
plant to anyone. It was, quite simply, stolen from me and is being
sold by others. Whenever I have found anyone selling this plant I have
contacted them and asked them to stop. Some have, and some have
refused.
Personally, I can't imagine selling a plant after I had been told that it
had been stolen from the originator, that the originator didn't want it
introduced, and that it was an unstable plant that shortly turned to
worthless trash. I guess some people just can't help themselves if
they see an opportunity to make a few bucks.
It's a small hosta with dark green leaves with a white center marked by
green speckles. It is a sport of a seedling of a streaked sport of 'Fortunei
Obscura'.
It certainly has an interesting leaf. And while I liked the plant well
enough to give it a tentative name, I decided that it was not worthy of
introduction because it is so unstable.
This is what happens to the plant after a short while. Now we have not given
this plant a great deal of care, since it's not going anywhere, but you can
still see the rather obvious problem. The plant is highly unstable,
and without constant division, the plant will revert to a large, solid green
seedling of 'Fortunei Obscura'. We regularly cut out the green divisions,
but as you can see, it just keeps trying to revert. We have never grown a
single plant that did not quickly start to lose its original leaf form and
start to revert to green. A green seedling of 'Fortunei Obscura' is
absolutely worthless, and as far as I am concerned, this plant should not be
sold.
I sent a division of the original to a tissue culture lab to have it
propagated under an exclusive contract, which means that all of the plants
produced belonged to me and were not to be sold by the lab.
Since the plant is highly unstable, I was hoping that in tissue culture it
might sport into something worthy of introduction. All of the plants
we received from the lab were as unstable, or even more so, than the parent,
so we never got anything worth introducing.
Unfortunately, a few plants were taken from the lab without my permission
and are now being sold as Cathy's Clown. Since the plants belonged to
me and I did not authorize anyone to sell them, I consider them stolen.
Unfortunately, as a practical matter, if people are determined to sell the
plant, there is not much I can do about it.
I have suggested that the people selling it simply change the name and
sell it as their own introduction. Obviously that would be unethical,
but no more than knowingly selling stolen merchandise, and at least people
wouldn't think I was responsible for introducing it.
So anyway, since we never registered or introduced the plant, and since we
liked the name, we named another of our seedlings 'Cathy's Clown'. It
will be registered soon. The AHS Registrar has been notified that the
plant now being sold is not 'Cathy's Clown' and it will not be registered as
such. We have renamed the imposter 'Return to Sender', and plan to register
it with that name. So for those of you who paid big bucks for it, what
you got was not 'Cathy's Clown'. If your supplier guarantees his
plants to be true to name, I'd ask for my money back.
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