How are hostas propagated?
Hostas are propagated either sexually or asexually. The first is completed when the pollen from a flower is transferred to the stigma of a flower and the ovum are fertilized. The result is seed which must then germinate, survive its youth, and mature to start the cycle again. The second involves no combining of sex cells, pollen and ovum. The old, reliable dividing of the sections of the plant to form two or more plants is a familiar example that has been done with most plants since people wanted to create additional plants of the same type. The ‘high tech’ version of this is called tissue culturing, which produces far larger numbers of offspring in a much abbreviated length of time. Tissue culture involves taking slivers of cells from one of the growth areas of the plant and introducing the appropriate growth hormones to produce the missing type of cells, root or meristem or leaf cells. This last method could be compared to creating ‘test tube babies’ or clones of the original plant.
