As with any large collection of
items whether they are books, laws of the land or hostas,
there needs to be ways developed to tell one from another. There
are over 12,900 named hostas (7,038 registered with
The American Hosta Society
as of 2018) and people have studied the various traits of the
plants to develop a systematic approach to identification. In
botany, this is called taxonomy...in the garden it is called,
"What's the name of that plant?"
Here at
PGC, we like to
concentrate on plants and their use in the home landscape so we
will emphasize those characteristics that are part of a design
criteria. People who like to just collect thousands of plants
because they are "different" will need to go into much more
depth on some of the minor differences such as the number of
veins or sterile vs viable seeds.
For our Landscape Use approach to
hostas, here are the plant traits that we will need to consider.
