I hope that it is NOT true that ALL 'Jewel of the Niles' will turn all yellow, eventually!
That will make me very sad!!!!

'Unstable', as I understand it, means a plant can change dramatically as in the leaves can look very
different from the 'norm' as in the striping of JOTN, or I like to call them 'harlequin leaves'!

JOTN is prized for it's ability to be 'unstable'! Many plants will occasionally throw a strange leaf,
being half yellow and half green or 1/4 yellow, etc. but this one is known to do it fairly consistently,
to a point, I guess, as I'm being told these days! Sigh!

Maybe that's what makes it interesting and attractive? Whatever, it looks gorgeous anyway!

any hosta can "sport" - but JOTN seems particularly prone to it. Even the one on the cover of the AHS Hosta Journal an issue or three ago had some uneveness.

Don't blame this on tissue culturing... once it is cultured, it is just another hosta division... Kevin Walek chose this sport from his own Dee's Golden Jewel BECAUSE it had uneven margins and streakiness.

Some streaked plants are very stable... Kisuji, Swirls, for example, stay streaky for years without care. Others will try to stablize to a solid color or an edge or center varieagation. Sea Prize tends to solid green... Savannah Supreme tends toward a light margin (Savannah), Galaxy will be tend toward all dark green.

The only way to keep streakers unstable and streaky when they want to stabilize is to divide them and grow the streaky divisions separately. This is especially important because the stabilized forms tend to be stronger and to eventually take over the whole plant.

Ken's experience with JOTN is that it will keep going to all yellow - basically back to its parent. Mine this year is about halfway there... I'll be chopping it up next year...

LOL Anyone that doesn't own Dee's Golden Jewel but has Jewel of the Nile is wasting their money buying both!
One plant will give you both in a few years.

Kentstar, if you are looking for drama in a barrel, get a montana Aureomarginata, or a big S&S Sport to fufill your needs..also consider a Regal Splendor. ;-))
Rox

My JON has one eye that is solid yellow this year

At one time I had three JOTN. I now have 3 Dee's Golden Jewels and only one JOTN. I was very good at separating gold eyes off. This year one came up all gold, even after splitting off the gold last year.

Is there a look-alike for JOTN that is stable?

Char

idiot said:

Ken's experience with JOTN

=============

that plus every other person i ever talked to... who isnt in denial ..

plus every plant i have ever seen in every garden i have ever been to ...

ken

listen newbie kent ...

lets not get all wound up about this ...

ALMOST ALL HOSTA ARE UNSTABLE .... got it??? ...

that is why we have sports.. and reversions.. and whatever else you want to call the weird things they do ...

some do weird things within a few years.. most take decades to do weird things... we like the weirdness ...

you are fixating on my simple comment that JOTN does this very fast ...

take that info.. and do what you want with it.. but dont jump to conclusions about all hosta.. based on my simple warning about JOTN ....

half the peeps will take my comment and go buy the plant.. so they can prove they can do it better than me ... lol.. been there done that .. usually ended agreeing with the caveat. . lol .. i suppose its a version of peeps who zone push ...

and hopefully.. the other.. smarter half ... unlike me.. will take the info.. and cross JOTN off their list ... since there are hundreds of others that are requisite to their garden ...

make sense??

ken

Enjoy your JOTN and in the future, if it sports yellow and the eye offends thee, pluck it out (apologies to St. Mattthew).

Being planted in a barrel it will be easier to "lift and separate" than if it were in the garden amidst other hostas.

(Sorry, I meant to say "Apologies to St. Mark.")

I found this comment in the plant description of 'Jewel of the Nile' on Hallsons' website:

"Comments: This is a very attractive blue-green centered sport of H. 'Dee's Golden Jewel' that is quite sun tolerant and will have the brightest yellow margin color when grown in some bright light. Although some pictures on the internet show a streaked plant, the streaked plants are from poor tissue culture cloning. The streaked clones are very unstable. Many eyes will revert to its parent (a solid gold plant) and they rarely keep any of the streaking over time." (Emphasis added.)

Thus it is not necessarily the case that every JOTN will put out all-gold sports, and getting a non-streaked specimen is key to avoiding that. Now I'm going out to take a closer look at the one I just planted. :)