Hosta 'Chance Encounter' Variegated Leaf Stability
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing Hosta cultivars lack a combination of large, broadly ovate leaves with yellowish-chartreuse margins, intermediate color featherings, and pale purple to near-white flowers densely arranged on scapes, which are stable and true to type in asexual reproduction.
Innovation Solution
The development of Hosta 'Chance Encounter', a hybridized plant with large, broadly ovate leaves featuring a bluish-green center and chartreuse margin that matures to yellowish-chartreuse, along with intermediate color featherings, and pale purple to near-white flowers, achieved through asexual propagation and sterile shoot tip plant tissue culture.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If Hosta cultivars with variegated margins are selected, then visual appeal is improved, but leaf stability and resistance to necrosis deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies parameter changes by modifying the genetic composition through hybridization between specific parent plants with different variegation characteristics. The cross between the sport of 'Elegans' and 'Viking Ship' produced offspring with stabilized variegation patterns that maintain visual appeal while improving resistance to necrosis, demonstrating how changing genetic parameters can resolve the contradiction between aesthetics and stability.
2Area of moving object
If Hosta cultivars with larger leaves are selected, then garden utility is improved, but susceptibility to pests and diseases increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies composite materials by creating a hybrid plant that combines genetic traits from two different parent plants. The composite genetics from the sport of 'Elegans' and 'Viking Ship' produce a plant with large leaves that maintains enhanced resistance to pests and diseases, demonstrating how composite genetic material can achieve both large size and improved hardiness.
3Stability of the object's composition
If asexual propagation methods are used, then trait stability is improved, but propagation speed and productivity deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies segmentation by dividing the propagation process into two distinct methods: traditional asexual propagation through division for maintaining trait stability, and tissue culture for rapid multiplication. This segmentation allows each method to excel at its appropriate function, with division ensuring genetic fidelity and tissue culture providing high-speed propagation capability.
Data Source
AI summary
A new and distinct Hosta plant named ‘Chance Encounter’ of large, arching mounds of broadly ovate, bluish-green leaves having wide chartreuse margins upon emerging and maturing to yellowish-chartreuse margins. The variegation is also attractively displayed with numerous featherings of intermediate colors between the center and the leaf margins. The flowers are very pale purple to near white held just above the foliage beginning in late June for about three weeks. ‘Chance Encounter’ has an excellent, very large, mounded habit and is useful in the landscape, as a specimen or en masse.