 |
| Top Left Hosta 'Sunny Halcyon' right H. 'June' - below both H. 'Halcyon' 8 May 2024 |
Today I noticed that Hosta ‘Halcyon’, Sunny Halcyon and June looked just about perfect. When Rosemary decided for us (I am happy to report that she made most of the right decisions in our life together for 52 years) we had to move from our little house in Burnaby to a large house with a corner garden in Kerrisdale I was persuaded strongly to become a gardener like her.
And she knew how to go about it. Our garden had lots of shade and I kept reading of an alien plant called hosta that somehow survived in deep shade. In those days houses were being torn down in our neighbourhood so at night we would go to the empty houses with our wheelbarrow and spades to liberate plants. One evening she pointed at a large dark green plant and said, “Alex that is a hosta. By the time we sold our Kerrisdale house and garden (alas!) 6 years ago I had amassed about 500 different hostas.
My favourite hosta has always been the deep blue narrow leafed Hosta ‘Halcyon’. How it came to be you will read below in an essay written by my friend Bob Solberg.
Hosta 'Halcyon' Elegance in Blue
As anybody who may read these blogs and go beyond placing emojis in social media I always try (not difficult) to make connections with the memory of my Rosemary who died on December 9 2020.
The connection is that since my Rosemary was a woman of grace, beauty and elegance I can assert that she considered Halcyon the most beautiful hosta in the garden.
Who was to know that it took her quite a few years to teach me what elegance was all about?
 |
| Bob Solberg |
The “Longiana” Story (Solberg 2009)
Way back in the fall of 1961 Eric Smith took some pollen from a late, reblooming plant of H. sieboldiana and crossed it on to the first flowers of a H. ‘Tardiflora’ scape. He had to finish ripening the seeds inside in a solution of sugar and water. He was able to germinate about 30 seeds of which 14 were blue. The result was his famous group of “Tardianas”, of which ‘Halcyon’ was the first introduced from this historic cross in 1974. He was never able to set seed on ‘Tardiflora’ again. (The Hosta Journal Vol. 13, page 18.)
He was able to cross this first generation (F1) with itself and produce a second generation (F2) of very blue hostas with variable leaf shapes. ‘Blue Wedgwood’, ‘Blue Dimples’, ‘Hadspen Blue’ and ‘Blue Moon’ are some of the most widely grown. Eric Smith was able to achieve his goal of producing small, heavily substanced, blue hostas for the very small garden.
As a group of maybe 30 in number or more, (they have become collector’s items now and many have been named after the fact), “Tardianas” are all small to medium size plants with at least some white wax so that they appear blue in color. They have good substance and a sort of stiffness and sturdiness to their personality. Their clumps are usually pretty tight with dense foliage. They are almost the perfect hostas, (you certainly could argue that ‘Halcyon’ is), although some of the second generation seedlings are very slow growing, like ‘Blue Moon’.
Being a student of hosta history and a great admirer of the insight of Eric Smith, when the rare opportunity of a reblooming H. sieboldiana presented itself to me in 1997, instead of repeating Eric Smith’s cross, I decided to use ‘One Man’s Treasure’ as the second parent. ‘One Man’s Treasure’ is a seedling of H. longipes hypoglauca and for all intents and purposes a form of the species, H. longipes. My new hostas were to be “Longianas”. I expected them to be blue, larger and more vigorous than the “Tardianas”, and well suited to all growing conditions.
I recovered 15 seeds from that cross and five seedlings made it to maturity. There was not a ‘Halcyon’ in that group, all were mediocre plants brimming with genetic potential. In 2001, hundreds of second generation seeds were taken from the F1 seedlings and germinated. Several hundred seedlings were then culled, first for the best blue color, and second for interesting leaf shapes, and soon there were only 25.
In 2010, 13 years later, I am introducing four of my second generation “Longiana” seedlings. They are a very special group of hostas, a new genetic combination, not of the historic proportions of the “Tardianas” by far, but a new line of breeding for all hosta hybridizers to incorporate into their seedling programs. All four are vigorous growing medium to large hostas with good color and distinct leaf shapes. They have good substance but lack the stiffness of the “Tardianas” and are more interesting to the eye. While none may ever rival ‘Halcyon’, ‘Summer Squall’ and ‘Sun Shower’ are great hostas.
