For sure, getting them watered MORNINGS is important to let the pollen and such stay on the blooms for night time visitors. ====>>> pollen doesnt work that way ... its only viable for a few hours... and degrades in heat very fast ... the ones that are viable.. any given night .. opened that afternoon ... i doubt it lasts over thru the next day.. and perhaps an indicator.. is that it has little scent left .. by the next morning .. i am guessing on that part... but it makes sense not to bother to lure in the pollinators.. if the pollen is dead ... being a species.. P should come true from seed ... but because it opens so late in summer ... there is not enough time for the pods to mature to viable seed .... for many of us the further north you go ... [90 days from 8/15 is mid-november.. and the plants are dead to the ground for me in MI ] ... some have tried cutting the stalks before freeze and trying to mature them in sugar water ... i lost interest at that point ... lol ... so ... if you wanted.. as your goal.. to add fragrance to your seedlings.. you 'take' pollen from P .... in the evening.. and somehow 'store' it.. to put on something else .. the next morning when those flowers are fresh .. ... [they used to use those black film canisters.. of which.. i bet you cant even buy them now ...] .. [for the truly crazed ... you try to store your pollen in august.. to put it onto those very early sieboldianas the following may.. i think it can be done in the freezer.. but again.. i lost interest at that point.. lol ...] BUT!!! ... being a species.. it would be time/effort wasted to put pollen of other things.. onto P .... it will not be accepted ... there.. more useless hosta knowledge ... i cant remember how old i am.. but i remember this stuff.. of course.. that might just be denial ... lol .. ken

can you insure there was no fert in the potting soil you planted it in??? if there was.. you surely need no more this year .... Ken Potting soils are not soils a better term is media, I only make this nit picking point because it leads to such confusion. Potting media is inert; in fact they go to great lengths to make sure it isn't soil. Real soil in the ground is like a coral reef; the soil is a living organism. Using soil in a pot can be done but it is very difficult. We take a plant out of the soil and put it in a pot, like leaving the earth and going into outer space, in the pot we must provide the water and the soil must not hold to much water or to little, etc, etc. We must provide all of the food and not too much, etc, etc. Pot culture is very complicated and has been studied to death but pots are not the soil and much of what we know about growing in pots does not apply in the soil. Vermiculite, perlite, sphagnum and "I" believe fertilizer doesnÂt work in the soil. IÂm not talking about organic amendments such as alfalfa meal, Milorganite, etc, the soil can utilize organic amendments. I think Ken has it right; we do more harm thinking we can help the soil that has figured out how to support billions of life forms. Some will read this as preachy and what I am saying is it is just practical and by the way fairly easy.

I think the problem is with imprecise terms. We know that pollinator insects are drawn to flowers in at least two ways - visually and by chemicals released into the air. I was interested in researching monarchs that they are not so much attracted to a certain color as they are to patches of color... and if there is a patch of pink queen of the prairie that attracts them and they start nectaring, they may very well ignore white queen of the meadow one plant over... But they also are definitely attracted to chemicals. When liatris ligulistylis is blooming, they seem to find it from miles away... and it is like "monarch crack" - they just can't take anything else seriously... I think what we are referring to as smelling and scents are really just chemicals and chemical receptors. In this respect, I suspect your suspicion is true. Maybe not universally all - but certainly flowers are designed to put out visual and chemical attractants and many of those "smells" might not register on the human nose. We didn't evolve needing to pick them all up. Still... when we hosta people talk about scent, we are usually talking about a notable scent. That's where the conflict over Fragrant Blue comes up. I can stick my nose into that flower all day long and not get anything but an allergic response - no fragrance. For years I claimed I could pick something up... then DW and others would declare the Emperor had no clothes. But since it was named Fragrant Blue by someone who clearly thought it was fragrant, I'm leaving the door open to the idea that one of two scenarios apply. Either there are two strains of the plant out there... a minority that have a noticeable fragrance and a majority that don't... or there is a fragrant chemical that most people don't detect but that some folks do. Both are reasonable hypotheses. Long way of saying - I think you are probably right, Theresa... I suspect all - or virtually all - flowers give off a "scent" whether or not we have the receptors to pick them up.

Thanks so much to Phil, bunnycat, caliloo, and jbranch for posting your pictures! Maybe I should have bought it? Hmmmm... I just love those long, graceful looking leaves, and the red petioles are a bonus too! I think it was about $23 for a large-sized pot, I'm thinking at least 3 eyes?? Hmmm... And bunnycat, I feel your pain with the hard drive failure thing... I just got finished installing a new hard drive and re-loading Windows on my PC. Will you be able to rescue the data from your crashed drive? Sorry, this is unrelated to Gardenweb stuff, but if you need any tips on accessing the data from an unbootable hard drive, please feel free to send me a private email! I am currently well-versed in that area! Buff