it is the slowest one I have as well but a few pips poked through yesterday

I sure think it is; Better opinions will be along, but if it's not vole, I'd have to guess some other rodent, maybe a rabbit? I'm very sorry to see that, Kathy. Hope someone who knows for sure will offer info.

Don B.

I get as much as a month between the first to come up and the last. Is that a pip in the middle of your happy white roots? I thought voles eat roots, and you have lotsa roots.

-Babka

I wish I had taken a better picture. That thing that looks like it might be a pip is where some roots come together where last years petiole fibers where but the crown was gone. Some of the roots where still oriented together into where the crown should be only nothing was there. 10 o'clock from the middle of the picture is one of those. Ten days ago I thought I saw the tiniest pips on it and stopped worrying about it, then nada. It was planted late last season in a sandy bed that never got mulched.

So if I go for a replacement, does anybody want to weigh in on SG vs Cathedral Windows?

Kathy

When voles have attacked our hostas, there are no roots left. Voles got into two more beds this past winter.

Maybe a crown dry rot from being to dry?

Kathy, I have the same thing. I have about 16 empty pots and 4 or five on their last leg. Most were last year's acquisitions, but not all. Some were liners, but not all. They were in well draining potting soil. They weren't watered over the winter and we had very little rain. We did, however, have a 16 degree morning in early March in addition to a cold winter.

bk

Here's one I dug up just too see what the problem was, as Babka asked to see the roots. It was kind of a nice surprise, but will take a lot of babying to get past this.

you missed the driveway ...?????

repot it... and be patient ...

any scrap of crown.. left on a healthy root... can live ... though they would be young TC size.. for a long time ...

you say you planted it late last fall.. in sand.. did you bare root it then??? or plant it with a gob of high peat media???

ken

Kathy, since we are in the same zone, I thought I would weigh in and say my Stained Glass is up now. It has been for a couple of weeks. Here's the latest pic of pips/unfurling, taken two days ago:

I got it late last fall from Green Mountain. It was a generous, large rooted plant that was/was going dormant. I planted it in the potting medium I'm using now, which is 1/2 regular Miracle Grow potting soil and 1/2 pine bark mulch.

My Aphrodite was exactly the same. The roots were there, but the crowns were gone. (not that i'll miss that one).

bk

I got the SG, a Blue Angel, and Great Expectations in November last year for $21 total at the farmers market from a table that had a banner that identified them as Thomasville Nursery, Denton, NC. I've found no record of any nursery by that name on the internet.
The BA has pips as big as your thumb now (it's in a cold gully bed, so later than the rest of the garden) and the GE did have some weird distortion at the end of its pips when it came up. Here's the most recent pic of GE. It looks like someone chewed on the ends of the leaves.

Here's an earlier pic of GE, showing the tip damage. I ignored it because of all the bad press GE gets, but maybe there was some bug that ate the pips in the soil that came with them.
Ken, all I can remember about planting them was that it was going to freeze in two days and I didn't know how that would affect them.
Hostaholic is not an inaccurate term. I know I shouldn't buy from undocumented sources, but staring at this big beautiful Blue Angel and two other highly desirable hostas at a great price it's really hard to say no.
It's like really, just this one drink can't hurt, right?
Kathy

The distorted end looks like cold damage.

bk