You have done an excellent job of explaining what you have; an unstable Royal Tiara that is still figuring out who it wants to be!

Continue to separate the variegations and you may end up with the whole family!

The beauty of hosta sporting back and forth, and forth and back!

Bruce

Royal Standard is supposed to be a Golden Tiara sport... so its possible you have a reversion to original and a solid sport? My uneducated guess is that it is a mislabeled golden tiara with solid sport. Wait to see what the pros and tiara fans actually have to say :)

the yellow from RT is not the yellow from GT .... and now i see

crikey.. read the zillis comment at the link ... perhaps it is gold edger ...

why dont you compare and let us know ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

oooops I meant Royal Tiara, not royal standard

Smorz, I kept reading that and was like "WHAT?! Royal Standard is a completely different beast!" Then I finally scrolled down :)

Bruce, thank you for the kind words. And thank you for weighing in on my thread. I enjoyed reading your comments! It is interesting that you are the first to suggest it is an unstable RT. I can live with that - at least it can lose the NOID designation.

For some reason I don't really care for the contortionist look of the true RT but this sport appeals to me, as does the main solid portion of this hosta.

I really hope it continues to develop more sports - it's fun and fascinating.

Jo

P.S. Fingers crossed that all your Aphrodites` blooms open this year! :-) I saved a picture to my album of Plantaginea....the one of your hand cradling your Aphrodite open blooms from previous years. It reminds me that I want one. :-)

The yellowish hostas may have different yellow coloring very often depending on how much sun they get. The more sun the golder the hue and often that gold can seem to glow. That is one of the real beauties of the original Golden Tiara. It is almost luminescent in the right light.

Personally it looks to me to be one of the tiara family, which is actually not all that stable in its variegation.

About the only way to know with any assurance is to buy a golden edger and a platinum tiara (the two closest candidates I can see as parents) and grow them for comparison to what you have. Flower season and flower color will be something to watch for.

One big problem is whether it is the plain or the variegated is really the sport. Variegated hostas often have a very bad habit of reverting to plain colored leaves, and the tiaras, for example, are as unstable as any..

This post was edited by OldDutch on Thu, Aug 7, 14 at 12:16

OldDutch, thank you...and I agree about your sunlight observations. I have always pushed the envelope with sun exposure, giving my hostas more sun to see how they respond. (Great Expectations loves it but I regretted experimenting with American Sweetheart, Diana Remembered and Summer Breeze...trial and error - read as error, lol)

Until recently, I had this hosta potted since last year...moving it to different locations, experimenting with siting. It maintained a chartreuse tone when out of direct sunlight. I will act on your suggestion and pick up both and observe, since I don't have either...and wouldn't mind having them :-). Thank you. I have added another pic of a Golden Tiara after your comment re luminescence. :-)

Ken, thank you. Gold Edger's flowers are darker than this one. My leaves are very smooth with very shallow veins and feel like soft leather. GE is viridescent whereas this one is lutescent. Golden Edger's leaves are larger and pronouncedly heart shaped from what I see in my reference text as well, contrary to the NOID.

Smorz, thank you. Re your suggestion about reversion....this hosta seems too light and small to be a GT....but that can always change with age I suppose. When I originally bought GT the shape and colour of leaf and mound looked just like it does now, size being the only exception. I have a couple of GT's in different locations... But, I went back to look and I have three GT's, all in different locations. Took a pic of the one in full sun till 2ish. Nope, not like NOID.

I am hoping next year will be more telling. It will be into its third year here and should be displaying at least some mature tendencies.

The very upside to this post is OldDutch's suggestion to pick up more hostas! Well, it DOES make perfect sense, doesn't it? Lol

{{!gwi}}