Liners are the vegetative equivalent of "Plugs". They're usually done by cuttings, but with hosta my guess would mean they were tissue cultured. Depending on their age their size would most likely be small and the word comes from the expression lining out. It implies you need to grow them on. Used to be hosta was normally received "bare root" in a dormant stage in late winter or early spring. Liners gives a grower some choices about when they want to deal with recieving the stock, because it's not limited to shipping in a month or two timeframe. However, with bareroot, they were numbered by a coding relating to age or growth points or root size..... so you had a very good idea what the potential first year size of the resulting plant would be. With liners you can assume its going to be little. I haven't done hosta by liner yet, I still order bare root.

I do both liners and bareroot. Everything Calliope said was good advice, and I won't repeat, however I wanted to note that hosta liners come in various sizes. From a decent size which they refer to as 18's to very small-- the smallest I've had is 96's. That refers to the number of plants per flat. The 96's are probably about 1 '/2", so picture 96 plants in a flat like you would buy annuals in, approx 10x20". Be sure they are a decent size, and if the price is good, they might be a good deal, but be prepared to take very good care of them, as they are probably babies. Hope all this info hasn't confused, and if you need more help let us know.

You are great teachers that is what I needed to know. explination great. do you know if there is a really good book out there that teaches all these items and terms to you?