why not.. you cant ID any blue sieboldiana nor.. elegans in particular.. until it shows a mature leaf.. in say.. 5 to 7 to 9 years ...

we can have a lot of fun guessing .. but it wont be more than that ...

ken

ps: for a decade or so.. it was thought to come true from seed... and sold under the cultivar name ... so we cant even tell you ... what the real elegans is.. nor looks like ...

Here's a 5 year old Elegans -

I have wondered the same thing, why is ‘elegans’ different. Last
year at a grocery store (for heavens’ sake) I saw quarts of H. sieboldiana
'Elegans' for a few bucks. I bought 2, went home and looked it up, then went
back and bought 4 more. Or maybe it was 6. They are all looking fantastic, with
leaves of an impressive size: you’d never guess they were quarts. They are all about the size of gardenfool's first photo.

I don’t see
much puckering yet, but perhaps later. (I’m crazy about puckered leaves on my
larger leaved ones. I can’t explain why, I tried to, walking around the ChicagoBotanic garden main hosta area with
my family recently. I think that maybe it’s just one more thing you can look
at, especially if it’s a solid colored leaf, or one with not much contrast). I
will have trouble telling them apart from the other large leaved ones in my
most hostariffic bed, but I’ll worry about that later (if at all). I’m not a collector,
if it’s big, and blue (ish), I’ll be happy.

Whatever it is, I like it...Tag read sieboldiana...

Don B.

All nestled and protected, gorgeous deep blue and the companion fern is so pretty too!

It's still leafing out (pic is from last year) and appears to be much bigger! : )

Looks really healthy! Is that a Ghost fern, or a japanese?

I don't know if this is even relevent given that I know so little about the different kind of Hostas but I recently saw oodles of 'Blue Elegans' at a BB store. I get that they probably mislabel things a lot, so that might not mean a thing. They were very blue and looked (to me) like the ones pictured above. They were also in bloom.

Elegans still busting out this AM. I think it is going to eat up my little Autumn Frost.

I checked on one I couldn't see last night when I first read this thread. 5 eyes, and it too was just a quart last year! That one gets more sun than the others, and has no root competition. That makes it the fastest growing hosta I've ever had.

I saw a lot in 2.5 quart pots at Menard's this morning (Chicago NW suburbs).

Actually, it's not h. sieboldiana Elegans. It's just Elegans.

This is copied from the hostalibrary h. Elegans page:
Use of the name sieboldiana
'Elegans', though widespread, is technically incorrect. The name 'Elegans' was
originally given to a hybrid created by Arends, which was called 'Robusta'.
Today the name is used for a
variety of different blue sieboldiana-type plants which have been grown
from seed in the last century. It should be considered a general name for
these plants, and not that of a specific cultivar. In preparation for his book
The Genus Hosta, W. George Schmid once tried to track down the original
plant from Arends, but was able only to narrow it down to five growing in two
locations in Germany.

This is from the Sieboldiana page:
sieboldiana is an extremely variable cultivated species. A
selected clonal form named ‘Gray Cole’ (Kuk) best exemplifies the Western form,
which can reach immense proportions. The cultivated population includes many
seedlings which have been selected for conformity to the accepted norm. Well
over 100 named cultivars look very much like the idealized form of this
species, which is a cultivar form and many Japanese naturalists have reported
to that they have never encountered such plants in the wild.
The species as represented in the West is clearly hybridized, but has been
treated as a species since the 1830s.


So, sieboldiana is not a species, but a cultivar.

bk

I took my reference to the name right out of Mark Zilis's Field Guide to Hostas book, published 2014.

When I first bought this hosta back in the 80`s that is how it was identified.

Jo, I apologize. I was just quoting the hostalibrary,

bk

Pshaw, Bkay...no need to apologize! we were both quoting sources we trust to be updated and reliable. :-).

Linnea, it's a ghost fern.