Back Matter
Glossary
Every term used in this guide, defined plainly.
- Chill hours
- Total hours below 40 °F a plant accumulates over winter. Hostas need roughly 6 weeks (about 1,000 hours).
- Cotyledon
- The first leaf to emerge from a seed. On a hosta, it's a single narrow grass-like blade — not yet hosta-shaped.
- Crown
- The short underground stem at the base of the plant from which leaves and flowers emerge. Properly a rhizome.
- Cultivar
- "Cultivated variety." A named selection propagated to be genetically identical to a chosen parent plant. Almost every garden hosta is a cultivar.
- Damping off
- A fungal disease of seedlings causing collapse at the soil line. Caused by overly wet, still air.
- Deadheading
- Cutting off spent flowers (or in hostas, spent scapes) before they form seed.
- Division
- The process of cutting a mature clump into multiple pieces. Also: each individual piece resulting from that process.
- Dormancy
- Winter rest period during which the plant's top growth dies back but the underground crown remains alive.
- Eye
- A single growth point on the hosta crown. One eye produces one rosette of leaves. Mature clumps have dozens.
- Glaucous
- Covered with a powdery wax bloom that gives a blue or grey appearance. The blue color of a "blue hosta" is glaucous wax over an underlying green leaf.
- Hardening off
- Gradual acclimation of indoor-grown seedlings to outdoor conditions, over 7–10 days.
- Herbaceous perennial
- A plant that lives multiple years but whose above-ground parts die back each winter.
- HVX
- Hosta Virus X. An incurable infectious disease of hostas; affected plants must be destroyed.
- Midrib
- The central vein of a leaf, running from petiole to leaf tip.
- Monocot
- One of two great divisions of flowering plants. Monocot leaves have parallel veins; their seeds have one cotyledon. Hostas, grasses, and lilies are monocots.
- Mulch volcano
- Mulch piled in a cone against the crown or trunk of a plant. Universally bad; causes rot and rodent damage.
- Petiole
- The stem of a leaf, connecting the blade to the crown.
- Rhizome
- An underground horizontal stem. The hosta crown is technically a short, compressed rhizome.
- Scape
- A leafless flower stalk that rises directly from the crown.
- Sclerotia
- Small (mustard-seed sized), tough, tan-to-brown fungal resting bodies. The diagnostic sign of crown rot.
- Sport
- A spontaneous mutation appearing in part of a plant, often as a different-colored leaf. Many named cultivars (including 'Patriot' and 'June') originated as sports.
- Stratification
- A period of cold, moist conditions used to improve and synchronize seed germination.
- Substance
- The thickness and stiffness of a hosta leaf. High-substance leaves are slug-resistant and weather-tolerant; low-substance leaves are tender.
- Tissue culture
- Laboratory propagation of clonal plants from a tiny piece of tissue grown on sterile agar. How nurseries mass-produce hostas.
- USDA hardiness zone
- A numbered zone based on average minimum winter temperatures. Most of Ohio is in zones 5b through 6b.
- Variegation
- A pattern of two or more colors in the same leaf. White or yellow areas lack chlorophyll.