Pieter do you find bract development to be inconsistent from year to year?

whats the weather been like in the bc this summer?

I don’t understand fasciating………is it that leafy brach? My Rainforest Sunrise had that last year. It was the first time it flowered so I thought that was normal. This year it did not bloom that way. So I had a fasciating scape last year? Or is it more than that?

Also I have several hostas that bloom at the normal time, and then late August, early September, they send scapes up again. Vulcan, Sagae and I think Blazing did this more than once. Is that different?

debra

Doug, I've found bract development to be inconsistent. Weather in the We(s)t Coast has been cold, particularly through the end of May. I'd say most everything here is about 2 weeks behind where I'd expect them to be. For example our Oriental hybrid lilies are usually done by the end of July, they only got going about a week ago. FWIW I have found large leafy bracts to be predominant in the various fragrant varieties, I see it a lot in 'Guacamole' and 'Fragrant Beauty', but again, inconsistent.

Debra, it's a fair question as to whether or not leafy bracts is a form of fasciation, there's no mention of it in the Wikipedia page as such. Leafy bracts of the size I'm seeing are an abnormal development and typically will not re-occur on the same plant the next year. What you're experiencing with 'Vulcan' and 'Sagae' is sometimes referred to as re-blooming but that's really an incorrect term. I suppose a more correct term would be 2nd flush. This is what the late George Schmidt says on the subject:

" 'Reblooming' may be a misnomer. Hostas do NOT rebloom on the same scape. In mild winter areas, I have had H. 'Undulata' come up really early in spring and come to bloom. As the year proceeded into summer, it would raise new scapes and then bloom on these newly raised scapes. I did not dig up the rhizomes at that time, but my educated guess is that they sent up new scapes from new shoots. I have seen new shoots come up from very close to the existing shoots, but did not unearth the rhizome to see if it came from the same shoot or very near the old shoot. So what we have is two blooming seasons, an early one and a later one from the same rhizome. It takes prolonged warm temps and plenty of rain to make this work, as well as plenty of nutrients in the soil."

"While I believe this is temperature and moisture based, some hostas will be prone to bloom twice or even three times, while others simply will not raise duplicate blooms, no matter what the environment dishes out. I do not believe that second shoots arise from the old shoot; rather, the rhizome produces a new set of shoots (actually next year's shoots) that will bloom if environmental forces allow it. You can force some hostas to do that in a greenhouse and that should prove the ecological cause for this phenomenon."

"I have never seen a true rebloomer (same scape) during my 50 years messing around with the genus. 'Rebloom' is the wrong term. I would suggest that 'repeat bloomer' might be correct, but that is also subject to interpretation. To describe it in a sentence, one might say 'late season repeat bloomer'."

Pieter

Those are not true fasciated scapes. A true fasciated scape is several scapes melded together, side by side. Apparently, it's fairly common on daylillies. It does happen on hosta. I'm not sure what the other weird scapes are called.

My Fragrant King had one "leafy" flower stalk, but the rest are/were normal.

This is a photo of a true fasciated scape on a hosta.

bkay

Edited to add:

old post on fasciated scapes

edited to add:

another old post on Houzz, with a comment from Bruce Banyai

Excellent read!!

debra