The Beauty of Asymmetry
Friday, May 22, 2020
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| Hosta 'First Frost' 22 May 2020 |
Symmetry is something that is appealing to most people. Cars are symmetrical and in most
cases they are the same on both sides and the front left is exactly the front
right.
Tourists
who visit Mexican markets marvel at the perfect piles of fruit which are
displayed in symmetrical order.
I believe
that asymmetry can also be appealing and particularly to those who see
themselves as snobs (moi!).
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| Hosta 'First Frost' 26 July 2017 |
As a member
of the Vancouver Rose Society I am sure that when members display their roses
in the annual rose show that symmetry plays an important part in placing the
blooms in vases and perhaps those very blooms have to show perfect symmetry.
As a former
member of the American Hosta Society (I plan to join again and attend the convention in Kalamazoo next year!) I know that hybridizers prize symmetry in their
variegated creations.
Hostas,
some say, are the white mice of the plant kingdom. They sport (mutate) and change when
you are not looking. Most of the thousands of hosta cultivars available now
randomly appeared in rows in big and small nurseries. Smart observers would
then take these sports and divide them and reproduce them by tissue culture.
But in my
amateur opinion C. & R. Thompson’s introduction in 2005 of Hosta ‘Strip
Tease’, a sport of Hosta ‘Gold Standard’ represents a divide in that search for
perfect symmetry. Another almost messy hosta (but not for me) that is nicely
all over the place is Hosta ‘Janet’. No leaf on this plant is exactly the same
as any other within that plant.
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| Hosta 'Strip Tease' 22 May 2020 |
In my
garden today, a lovely hosta, 'First Frost' that has a wide yellow border and a blue/green
centre had these three unusually different leaves (most appealing to me). For a
hosta show these leaves would have been cut off so that the plant would look
the same from all angles.
In a way I
am sorry that I have cut those leaves to scan them. Perhaps other leaves will
emerge like these and who knows there may be someone out there (Kalamazoo?)
with the idea of introducing an assymetrical hosta.
A Vision Impure - Asymmetry
A Vision Impure - Asymmetry
