The Beauty of Asymmetry

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!). 

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.

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