Our Descriptions

Cupped and puckered, cupped and puckered. How many ways are there to say cupped and puckered? Concave and pebbled? Scooped out, with lots of little bumps? I apologize for using the same terms over and over, but there are only so many ways to describe a leaf.

We sometimes get calls from customers who have received their plants and find that they don't look much like our descriptions.  Hostas aren't like other plants.  When you buy a petunia, if you see a picture of it's flower and know how tall it gets, you pretty well know what you've got.  Hostas are more like puppies.  You can get a general idea of what a hosta is going to look like when you see a young plant, but if you've never seen one when it's full grown, you may be in for a surprise.  Our descriptions generally refer to the characteristics of a mature plant, and we try not to put pictures of young plants on our site.

Hostas go through a juvenile period which, from the seedling stage, can last four to five years and even longer.  As they mature, there is a fairly dramatic change in appearance - leaves get bigger, variegated margins get wider, puckering and other leaf textures get more pronounced - just about everything we like about hostas gets better as they age.  Unfortunately, when you divide the plants, they revert to the juvenile stage and the process starts over, so most of the plants you buy or see at your local garden center bear little resemblance to what you'll see in your garden in three to five years.  No one who has seen 'Frosted Jade' only in one-gallon pots at a garden center could possibly understand why it is consistently rated as one of the best hostas ever introduced.  If you choose your hostas based solely on what you see in a nursery pot, you may be in for a surprise in a few years, but fortunately, in almost every case, the changes that hostas go through as they age are for the better.  If you like it when it's young, you're probably going to love it as it matures.

To make things a bit more difficult, hostas also change through the season, and plants grown in low light will look different than those grown in sun. The leaves in this picture both come from the same variety, H. 'Green Gold'.  The one on the left was grown in the sun, the one on the right, in the shade.  As a general rule, sun grown plants have smaller, thicker leaves, which are lighter in color, while plants grown in low light are usually darker, with larger, thinner leaves, and the plant usually has a "softer" appearance.

Also, blue hostas are not really blue.  They have a waxy coating on their leaf that makes them look blue, but that coating can melt off in the heat of summer or wash of under frequent rain or watering, leaving a green hosta by the end of the year. Some varieties hold their blue color longer than others, but generally it depends more on weather condition than anything else.

Some hostas that start the season with bright yellow leaves will turn green by summer, a characteristic called viridescence.  They can also start out green and turn yellow (lutescence).  In some variegated  hostas, margins or centers that start the season yellow will change to bright or creamy white by the end of the year (albescence).

How Big Will They Get?

I think it’s more important to indicate the general impression the plant gives than to try to estimate its ultimate size.  The actual measurements of the plant depend on what year you take them and how and where the plant is grown.  

I have classified our plants into five groups.  And don’t be calling me to tell me you have a ‘Golden Tiara’ that’s three feet across. I write the catalog so I get to decide.

Mini - little bitty hostas
Small - clump size up to about 2’ across.
Medium - clump size up to about 3’ across.
Large - specimen size plants that will reach 4-5’ across.
Very large - great big hostas.

In general, I would expect a clump to be about half to three quarters as high as it is wide, though some, especially those noted as "vase-shaped" may be taller than they are wide.

I know that's not what you want.  You want to know exactly how tall the plant will get and how wide it will be, so you'll know whether to put it in front of your pink azalea or behind the coral bells. And how will you know how far apart to plant them unless you know whether they'll be 28" wide or 32"?  Well, this is gardening, not engineering. 

It probably sounds easy to tell you how far apart to plant your hostas.  They do it on those little tags they give you with the merigolds, don't they?  Well it's not as simple as planting merigolds.  On the other hand, look at the pictures on our home page and compare that to a row of little yellow merigolds spaced 8" apart.  You might have to think a bit instead of follow directions on a tag, but it will be worth it, trust me.

Probably the two most respected works on hostas currently available are The Genus Hosta by George Schmid and The Hosta Handbook by Mark Zillis. Both are written by knowledgeable authorities and both list a large variety of hostas and indicate their clump size. Here are some common hostas and their sizes listed by the two books and by their official registration information, respectively: Golden Sculpture, 22"w x 24"h or 72"w x 33"h or 40"w x 30"h. Krossa Regal, 30"w x 28"h or 71"w x 33"h or 36"w x 36"h. Blue Dimples, 20"w x 14"h or 45"w x 18"h or 18"w x 13"h. 

In each case, I would presume that someone went outside with a tape measure and measured a plant, and yet all three of the measurements for the same variety are completely different. Why is there such a difference when we're looking at common, every day hostas that anybody writing a book should be totally familiar with? Because the plant's size depends on when you measure it. Hostas just keep growing throughout their life cycle, 10, maybe 20 years. So when do we measure? Add to that problem the fact that clump size is very much influenced by the amount of moisture available and other cultural factors, and probably even by the area of the country where they are grown, and things start getting a bit complicated. I could give the ultimate size, but you'll probably never see it unless you keep the plant and leave it undisturbed for 15 or 20 years. Or I could pick a year, and assuming your growing conditions are just like ours, I may be pretty close, but the next year, the plant will just be larger.

 Obviously I could give the plant sizes in inches. All I would have to do is copy them from someone's book (maybe change them by an inch so I wouldn't be plagiarizing). But I think that breaking the plants down into 5 size groups gives a reasonable indication of what you can expect. If you need more than that, let me know and I'll make up some numbers.