Well, you gotta wonder. Perhaps HVX was here sooner than the 90's. It certainly looks suspicious to me, but way back then it was considered a curious anomoly. Glad I didn't get any of those!

-Babka

its Viridescent.

greening up as the heat rises in later spring .... virus isnt transitory like that ...

im pretty sure it been tested to kingdom come ...

is there a way to reference old hosta journals????

ken

i've got all the pdfs.

cynthia goes way back.

i lifted an a couple of paragraphs from the 1984 bulletin. credit to american hosta society and chet tompkins.

>>>

The American Hosta Society Bulletin 15th Anniversary Issue 1984

THROUGH THE YEARS wITH HOSTAS

by Chet Tompkins

Oregon City, OR

She worked diligently, as I have old snapshots and color

slides of her huge plants of hosta seedlings up through 1937 to 1948,

when we left the nursery to move to my own place across town. My own hobby of iris and iris hybridizing had become a full time busi­ness and I had begun to catalogue daylilies as well in 1940, so about all I had time to do was to move all of her hostas over to the Cassel­man Street site. They were wonderful there and her splashed varieties, large blues, silvers and gray-greens were drawing the attention of every visitor.

>

The day a group of us went to Shenandoah to see the hems at Helen Field Fisher's, we wanted to start a Hemerocallis Society and we did it that day beginning with our group. There were several of us, Mary Lester from Georgia, Maria Marcus of Le Mars, Iowa, I think we elected her as our first president, Vivian Christenson of Marcus, Iowa, Ethel Ricker of Sioux City, Henry Sass and myself. Henry and I each dug a number of hemerocallis and starts of some of mother's hostas and passed them out to places we visited that day. I cannot remember the date; someplace in the office at the farm I have a check marked $50.00 for helping set up the Midwest Hem Society saying: Ship for C. Tompkins and Henry Sass. Neither of us had taken much cash so I wrote a check and Henry settled with me later. I do not remember just which seedlings were given out but George Rose, manager then of Henry Field Company, had lovely plants of the splashed one and the bluest one for some time later. I sold them large wholesale orders of iris, so was there two or three times a year until I moved to Oregon. Those were the best two, of course, that later I named

'Cynthia' and 'Lakeport Blue.

its mentioned on the hosta library

https://hostalibrary.org/firstlook/HVXMyths.htm

MYTH - All mottled foliage in hostas is caused by viruses.
FACT – Mottling patterns in hostas can have a variety of causes, some of them environmental, and many have causes which we do not yet understand. 'Xanadu Paisley' has been repeatedly tested and despite its similarity to HVX symptoms has yet to be shown to be infected with any diseases. Old plants like 'Cynthia' and 'Filigree' also have no known cause for their mottled appearance and have never been know to pass this trait to other plants.

Per the Hosta Helper website, "According to The Hosta Handbook by Mark Zilis (2000), "The unusually splotched foliage makes it either one of the most beautiful hostas ever developed or something that induces itching. This characteristic is not caused by a virus, but is a genetic trait that can be passed on to seedlings."