Streaked Seedlings

What little I remember about genetics from biology class would lead me to expect that when cross-pollinating two variegated hostas, even if variegation was a recessive trait, at least some of the progeny would be variegated. Well, that’s not the way it works. For reasons I won’t go into here (there is an abundance of information on the subject in past issues of The Hosta Journal), in order to produce variegated seedlings reliably, you have to start with a pod parent that has streaked foliage. It’s not the only way, but it is by far the easiest.

For those not familiar with streaking in hostas, it is a form of variegation that produces irregular patterns of white or yellow throughout the leaf. While useful for breeding, the plants are also quite striking in the garden. Streaking is an unstable form of variegation, meaning that the patterns are constantly changing, with each leaf being different. Being unstable also means that the plants can loose the streaking in time if they are not maintained. As the plant matures, new divisions that arise as it multiplies may show streaking, edge or center variegation, solid color, and even combinations of these various patterns. In the picture above, you can see that some or all of these forms can often be seen on the same plant. The plant will favor the more stable (unstreaked) forms, and unless it is divided regularly to separate the shoots that retain the streaking from those that have reverted to a more stable state (solid color, or edge and center variegated), the streaking will eventually be lost. Because of their tendency to revert if they are not maintained, they are seldom offered for sale.

A streaked mother plant will produce a reasonable percentage of streaked and variegated offspring. When making crosses, the streaked plant must be used as the pod parent. Using its pollen on an unstreaked variety will not produce variegated or streaked seedlings. The pollen parent will affect all of the other characteristics of the offspring, but will not have any effect on variegation.

We occasionally offer streaked plants for sale here, but we do not list them until our plants have broken dormancy and we can evaluate the plants to make sure they have not reverted to a stable form.  These plants will normally be listed on our web page titled "Odds and Ends", which is also not usually posted on the site until our plants have broken dormancy in late March or April.