Editor’s note: We have no fossilized hostas that we can hold in our hands, so hosta evolution is all in our heads. Really the only way we can reconstruct the past is by analyzing the present. It is not just a philosophical exercise, however, we do have many physical characteristics of hostas that we can compare to try to find relationships in time. They now range from leaves, flowers, and pollen grains to proteins and DNA.

Evolution is a theory and is based on a series of premises. Simple usually means primitive, but not always. Very different may mean the same thing. In hostas it is thought that H. plantaginea, while a modern, fully evolved species, is most like that first hosta that appeared maybe 8 or 10 million years ago. It seems to have the most characteristics in common, (and the least with all other living hostas), with that first plant that would have looked like a hosta to us.

We really know very little about hosta evolution and the more methods we use to try to figure it out, the more confused we get. Sometimes more information does not make for more understanding. This said, the following is a semi-true story about how we got the hosta species we know and love. It is like the fairy tale that has that kernel of truth. Maybe you should curl up in bed, pull the covers up and snuggle down for this one.

The Hosta and the Bee

In a land far away, in a very ancient time there lived a magical group of green plants. Many years before, the continents had begun to drift apart and a vast ocean now separated the great land masses. The world was a warmer place then, with forests of spruce, magnolia and ginkgo trees. It was a peaceful, easy time where change came slowly.

We have no name for these magic plants, we know not what they called themselves, for our own existence as a species was millions of years away! We know they were quite comfortable in these warm, moist forests and flourished on both sides of the great ocean.

They were beautiful plants with waxy leaves and short spikes of very large, fragrant flowers. They filled the breeze of the forest night with the sweetest fragrance, luring ancient moths, hungry for their sugary nectar. In return for their delightful desert, the night hawks carried pollen from one magic plant to another in the moonlight, pollinating them. Both the plants and the moths were very pleased with this arrangement and assumed that it would go on happily ever after.

As we humans know all too well, good things do not last forever. We live on an ever changing planet and just when you get comfortable, that is when the big one hits. Today we worry about the oceans slowly rising, in ancient times it was the continents crashing into each other. Unbeknown to those magic plants and moths in the forest, what we now call India, was coming ashore at a rapid pace. For the next 10 million years or so, the Himalayas would climb toward the heavens, while across the ocean the Rockies would turn forest into prairie.

Growing mountains create climate change. They cast large shadows over the lands, drying them out. Giant mountains create giant rain shadows and eventually deserts. Our group of magic plants had prospered in the moist forests with the help of their moth friends but they could now sense that hard times were ahead. As forest began to give way to grassland they had to make a decision. Either follow the forest eastward toward the coast or adapt hand and hand with their pollinating moths and stay in this drier land. Magic plants on both sides of the great ocean were forced to choose.

Some of the plants decided to stay and were lost, but one group went deeper into the forest. Big changes were on the way. When the environment changes quickly, plants and animals change quickly also to insure their survival. Sometimes it is luck, like being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes it is by design. Whether by luck or intelligent design, in time, on one side of the great ocean the magic plants became hostas and on the other side they became yuccas.

Hosta 'Candy Dish' (right)

The climate continued to cool and become drier. Winter now brought snow and the forest began to change, too. For one thing, there were now many more bees than there were moths. Some hostas thought that the bees might make good pollinators and slowly changed to attract them. The bees were not nocturnal like the moths and arrived for work at dawn, so there was no need for flowers to open in the evening. The flower size shrunk to accommodate the smaller bees and white flowers more visible at night gave way to bright purple-striped flowers that glistened in the morning dew. Somewhere along the way the flowers lost their fragrance and the forest no longer was filled by the sweet scent of hostas on those warm summer nights.

There were other changes too as the hostas adapted to their new forest homes. More shade created a need for bigger, broader leaves. Flower scapes stretched skyward to become better targets for the bees and flowers became more numerous. The pollen, now treasured by the bees, became smaller, bee size. The bees seemed ever present, so bloom times shifted from late summer to June and July, giving more time for seeds to mature before the longer winters.

All this did not happen overnight or even in one human lifetime. It took millions of years. During this time the earth continued to cool and ice was now present at each end of the globe. There were warm centuries and cold ones and in response the hostas marched north and retreated south. Then about 74,000 years ago, the calm of a moonlit, mid-summer’s night was shattered by a loud rumble far to the south. Somewhere, in what we call Indonesia today, the earth exploded skyward. The sky all over Asia, and all over the world became dark and stayed dark for six years. Volcanic ash five feet deep covered some parts of the earth but the hostas were spared.

Summer was lost for those six years. Ice began to move southward from the pole and for 1000 years the earth was suddenly plunged into a brutal ice age. Most all the humans in the world died, some whole species. Their mobility and their intellect could not save them. The hostas could not run and many were victims of the ice. We do not know for sure how the others reacted to these dire times but they did manage to find a few good hiding places and did survive in what is now China.

For the next 60,000 years, the ice ebbed and flowed across the continents, but then global warming occurred in earnest. The ice began to melt and the seas began to fill. Japan became an island nation, Korea a peninsula, and the Sea of Japan was formed. Land bridges were closed and the surviving hostas that covered these areas became separated from their cousins, but I am getting a little ahead of myself.

Hosta 'White Elephant' (right)

It must have been quite a relief to the hostas when the ice started retreating for good 15,000 years ago. The summers grew longer, and the hostas grew stronger. But like any other time in history there were good years and bad years, cold centuries and warm ones. At this time there were at least three tribes of hostas in the forest and along the coast. Back in China, in the old homeland where hostas first arose millions of years before, there was H. plantaginea, still night blooming, fragrant flowered and moth pollinated.

Nearer the coast was a mixing bowl of hostas, stirred up by their hungry, helper bees. At least two groups of hostas began to act differently. One preferred warmer weather and when the climate turned colder they headed south. The other group liked the cold and huddled along the sea in those colder centuries. There were probably some other groups of hostas too, reckless fools that ventured too close to the ice to the north and froze or got swallowed up by the vast jungle to the south.

In good times and bad they would wander, like pioneers, looking for that perfect new home in the wilderness. Then one day, Japan became the hot vacation spot. It had mountains with cool forests and lovely ocean front property. It had it all and as it became surrounded by water on all sides, its climate moderated and moistened. The land rush was on. The hosta Northerners left Russia and headed south to the island of Sakhalin, then to Hokkaido and then on to Honshu. These hostas were the ancestors of H. rectifolia, still common in northern Japan, and H. montana and H. sieboldiana in the milder, moist forests further south.

The Southerners were quick to stake their claim to the Japanese Promised Land also. They took the shortcut down the Korean peninsula and snatched up the many fine properties in southern Japan. In their haste, they bypassed the islands between Korea and Japan, like Tsushima Island, home of H. tsushimensis, leaving them for the Northerners to populate. This southern branch of hostas became the many forms of H. longipes and H. kikutii as well as others.

The ocean continued to rise and the climate continued to warm. All those Japanese hostas were delighted with their new homes. Some settled into mountain side forests with spectacular views. Some became cliff dwellers in river valleys unafraid of heights. Some flourished in sunny, wet meadows, stretching their flowers high above the grasses, easy targets for the bees to find. Others had their own private islands safe from intruders. They all were fruitful and subdued the land.

These new homes offered isolation from other hostas and bees. They also allowed each hosta population to change quickly, becoming comfortably adapted to their new surroundings. They all began to speak different dialects of the same hosta language. They could still under understand each other well enough to party together but many northern hostas had trouble with those southern accents. In a few thousand years, from maybe just two species, there were 20 or 40, depending on who is counting.

Hosta 'Hideout' (right)

Back on the mainland life was not as lovely. The hostas left behind were being subjected to weird scientific experiments to insure their survival. “Normal” H. clausa and H. rectifolia (the Northern invader of Japan), may have been victims of a mad scientist bee. It reasoned that if two sets of chromosomes are good, three must be better. New research recently suggested that the two species were hybridized to form H. clausa var. clausa, the triploid closed-flowered hosta that spreads by underground shoots. The other bees, now out of work, were furious as this single clone spread through the forest like kudzu. Many headed for Japan to visit their long lost hosta friends.

The crazy bee did not stop at three sets of chromosomes, heaven forbid, he made a hosta with four! The same research suggests that Hosta ventricosa is a tetraploid cross of H. clausa var. normalis and H. rectifolia. This new hosta has a full compliment of genes from both species, but the bee did not stop there! He invented a safety override in the seed making process of his new hosta, so no other bees could tinker with his latest invention. We call it apomixis, a process where the flowers are pollinated by the bees but the embryos in the seeds are formed without the DNA of the pollen. In almost all cases, (no system of reproduction is fool proof, thank goodness), the seedlings of H. ventricosa are clones of that first parent.

Why did this all happen? I wonder did the mainland bees and their hosta friends have a falling out? Did the sane bees all leave for Japan, leaving only the crazy ones behind? Were the hostas that could clone themselves better able to survive the comings and goings of the ice sheets? We will never know, but I fear that one insane bee may have created a couple of Superhostas and then things just got totally out of control. Just another good idea gone bezerk.

You can pull the covers down from over your head now. The really scary part of the story is past. Every fairy tale must have some evil antagonist in it. In this case it was just a tiny bee. You are safe now. Time for the happy ending.

Humans soon took an interest in hostas. First as food and forage for their animals, then for the beauty of the plants themselves. They took them all over the world and became replacement bees, changing their green leaves to blue and gold, and splashing them with color. They increased their numbers greatly and both stretched and consolidated their gene pool.

Finally they took them home to live with them. They became their protectors from drought, voles and deer. They catered to their every need and the hostas grew lush in appreciation. Now in gardens throughout the land, hostas have once again been reunited with their yucca relatives and the bees and moths both rejoice. Evolution has come full circle and all is well in the forest. And they all lived happily ever after.

Postscript: Within a few days of finishing the writing of this little “fairy tale” I found myself hiking up a muddy trail in the mountains of Arizona. We were up about 6200 feet in a ponderosa pine forest and patches of snow remained in the most shaded areas. It was here that I came face to face with some North American cousins of our beloved hostas. They were agaves, growing in the cool evergreen shade of the tall pines. They grew in clumps, multiplying more often by rhizomes than seeds, their wide blue leaves lush with substance. It was easy to see the resemblance between them and hostas, the former adapted to forest life in a dry summer climate and the latter to life in a moist one. Sometimes fairy tales do come true!