is there some fashion police behind the scenes that says Yay and Nay to certain varieties?

==>>> its more about the cost to do it from start to sales ... plus the success rate .... and then the market ....

though we like to think we are the epicenter of the trade ... the big boys are all about volume ... and hard to grow plants .. just arent going to be invested in .... without a large market ...

a big part of length of time... would include.. how long it will take.. for a plant to grow to marketable size ...

i didnt think this was what you were asking in that other post .... i will have to mull it over... and report back ....

ken

A few thoughts from a non-professional.

The "process" takes at least two years before you should be buying anything at the retail level. No reputable dealer should sell you what the trade calls TC liners (or starters), which is what the process has produced after about 1 year. But it happens.

The reasons TC fails for a cultivar likely fall into two classes: plants where isolation of bud tissue is difficult (some plants are simply finicky; I suspect Midnight Oil may be one) and plants where the buds do not reproduce with a high percentage of "true to type" offspring. Sometimes that's for variability in variegation (such as 'Goodness Gracious') and for oddity in form (those with "congested" central veins like 'Stitch in Time' can be a problem, I believe). Streakers are a special case for this, of course, as the instability generally leads to the whole gamut of possibilities in variegation. I was pretty shocked when 'Ice Age Trail' actually went to market as a TC plant, but I guess they figured they could still sell all those 'Big Daddy's.

As to what goes into TC, the market is a bit odd right now, as it's all pretty much shopped out to production labs based on demand. Walter's Gardens, once one of the big daddies in generating new hostas, doesn't have much of an internal development program any more, but they still produce old-school hostas for the wholesale market. Mark Zilis's newest incarnation does TC for a few partners (Solberg, Avent, maybe some others). Rob Mortko sold his retail business, in theory so he could focus more on the lab/TC side, producing for retailers like Josh Spece, perhaps in direct collaboration with hybridizers (e.g. Don Dean). Other hybridizers and retailers work out production directly with smaller TC shops. The Europeans have their own routes, but then only get their new plants into the US in small batches.

All of this makes the yay/nay question interesting. If a retailer sees (or finds) a plant they want to sell, then they have to make it happen. I think no one wants to see a repeat of what happened at the end of the Q and Z days, where Mark was, frankly, producing a whole lot of new cultivars of little merit. We'll be stuck for a while, though in the situation where North American and European producers/growers discover identical (or near-identical) sports coming out of TC and then registering/producing/releasing both. Hybridizers face an increasingly narrow market in finding truly novel, garden-worthy plants to release, and an uphill battle in getting someone to produce/sell them.

For interest, this could be the best quick on-line reference for TC in hostas: http://www.plantsgalore.com/care/hostas/Hosta-propagation-TC.htm

Many thanks for your insights!

Am also wondering how much vigor depends on TC? I remember back in 2007? 2010? one of my fav hostas LS Love affair was kinda a wash...poor grower for many. Now I got another one last year and it is superb in its growth and show...

Just seen Eskimo Pie for sale by nursery which looks nice and vigorous and mine is still puny after 10 years...

Always been my feeling that a tc. plant is a bit of a lottery were vigour is concerned.

I can think of three, Spartacus, Sharp Dressed Man and Child of the Queen which have never had a growth spurt and are still puny little things years after I bought them.

Galls me to see others growing beautiful healthy, large plants of these varieties.

Dave

It does sometimes seem that way, Dave. But it may relate more to the growing-on to and through the lines/starter stage. If you get a TC plant that's pretty young, be sure to completely bare root it before planting. Walter's Gardens here in the US used some thing they called "Elle plugs" to grow on their TC plants, and didn't realize that many plants got stunted and took several seasons to recover. 'Clovelly' was one where I noted this.

How much culling happens by grower who grows their plants for year or two? I was told by one grower that Lionheart has about 50 % loss during this stage...

In theory all the resulting plantlets are perfect clones of the original. However, you have a lot of division and new cells in the culture, and mutations do happen. In the sterile, nutrient rich environment of the culture a mutations can be divided and continued for some time. It is relatively easy for a grower to cull out obvious visual mutations...........an all green form of a plant that is supposed to have a white edge, a plant that normally has short round leaves suddenly producing narrow elongated leaves. There can, however, also be mutations that you don't see. A theoretical example would be a mutation in an enzyme or the plants ability to take up nutrients. the little tissue culture plants in their nutrient rich agar would grow fine, but once you try to grow the plantlets in soil in "the real world" they may die or at least not thrive. This is not to say this always happens, or that tissue culture is bad. It is the best way to get numbers of a new cultivar in short time. Growers should grow some of their plants out frequently to see if they are still looking and behaving true to type.