Hosta Patriot (Seeds)

Description

Open Pollination (O.P.) seeds from Hosta Patriot. This one always sets seed, and I’ve never bothered to pull it. But, with some interest in tetraploids growing, I figured let’s offer it up and see what folks do with it.

So one of the questions I had, as a former orchid breeder, is what impact would the ploidy have on these open-pollinated seeds, and what ploidy would the offspring have? Well, suffice it to say that since we don’t know the paternal pollen, I cannot say what the ploidy will be, but the seeds are probably viable. If “selfs”, then the offspring would be tetraploid as well. If they were pollinated by one of the many neighboring diploid hostas (closest neighbors include Reptilian and Chirifu Oba), then there could be seedlings that are possibly triploid of sorts, or some other mixed form of ploidy. Bottom line, it’s a little more complex than what I’ve dealt with in the orchid world..there’s a good explanation and further investigation of hosta ploidy at HostaLists.org.

Just two packets available from the 2021 harvest; no further inventory on this one!

See more at Hosta Helper and the Hosta Library.