Two questions about Risky Business

bkay2000

last year

last modified: last year

Question 1.

According to myhostas.be, Risky Business is a sport of Striptease. Also, it says that Striptease is a sport of Gold Standard. So, is the green part Gold Standard?

Question 2.

I've been a hosta grower for years, but I've never dealt with a reversion. How do you separate the green part from the Risky Business part? (It was all Risky Business last year.)

bkay

Featured Answer

peren.all Zone 5a Ontario Canada

last year

bkay as to question 2 there are three ways you could choose to go.

If all the green leaves are coming from one eye - gather them in your hand at the base of the plant then twist and pull up. You may have to do this again later in the season if new green growth appears. If they are coming from two eyes repeat same process on the next.

Remove from pot. Take a very sharp knife and cut out the all green shoots. You can sometimes lose original parts with this method.

Remove from pot. Soak/spray to get rid of all the dirt. Then you can see clearly if you have separate eyes. Most likely they will be connected but there will be minimal cutting to separate them. Then repot. This is the method I would choose for you but now you have options.

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Comments (6)

djacob Z6a SE WI
last year
I am betting it’s reverting to Gold Standard. The leaves look just green now but a border may develop…..just guessing really. I would separate out the green leaves,pot them and see what happens.

debra
Pieter Klapwijk
last year
Reversion happens when it goes back one generation for want of a better term. So, if RB went back to Striptease it would be considered a reversion, any other kind of change is considered a sport, including going back to all-green and that happens with regularity. As it happens I also have a Risky Business that sported to green and I refer to that as Outta Business 😀. Taken on it's own it is quite impressive, just like Green Revolution which is the all-green version of Revolution. The two are frightfully similar but GR has more substance to its leaves since it is polyploid whereas OB is only diploid.

Definitely separate the green sports, leaving them may well result in an all-green in a couple of years...

Pieter
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djacob Z6a SE WI
last year
Pieter, thanks for that instructional!

debra
Babka NorCal 9b
last year
I recall reading in a Hosta Journal years ago, that Van Wade would just just twist off any "wrong" eyes on hostas in the ground. Solid green always grows more vigorously (more chlorophyll in the leaf?) than varigated leaves. But then he had a whole nursery full of hostas.

Yours in a pot would be easy to do the third way that peren.all describes above. Good advice!

-Babka
lindalana 5b Chicago
last year
Me, I twist and pull. I have lots of streakers, they revert all the time. I do not like digging out and planting back unless the other part is also valuable.