Michelle, the following will be added to the Rhizomatous List, and in essence it is what was said by George Schmid as quoted in the link to the previous posting you provided: The Hosta Dictionary posted by the American Hosta Society describes rhizomatous hostas as those which have long-reaching, underground horizontal stems and a loosely spreading habit. When asked which hostas are rhizomatous, W. George Schmid provided the following information: "The short answer is that all hostas are rhizomatous plants." "A rhizome is a horizontal stem of a plant found underground, sending out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes may also be referred to as creeping rootstalks. If a rhizome is composed of several rhizomatous, interconnected creeping roots, each piece may be able to give rise to new plants. This is a process known as vegetative reproduction and is used by gardeners to propagate hostas because the resulting plants are clones of the original plant. This process is called root (or rhizome) division. When digging different cultivars, the rhizome is often one contiguous mass, but it may also be a mass of smaller interconnected tubular rhizomes that look like a mass of stolons, but these are not stolons in the strict sense. " "A stolon is similar to a rhizome, but, unlike a rhizome which is the main stem of the plant, a stolon is a branch that sprouts from an existing stem, has long internodes, and generates new shoots at the end. In general, rhizomes have short internodes; they send out roots from the bottom of the nodes and new upward-growing shoots from the top of the nodes. It is also a method of reproduction for plants." "Stolons, on the other hand, are branches of the plant which grow at the soil surface or below ground and can form new plants at the ends or at the nodes. Stolons are often called runners. Imprecisely, they are stems that run atop or just under the ground; more specifically, a stolon is a horizontal shoot from a plant that grows on top of or below the soil surface with the ability to produce new clones of the same plant from buds at the tip." "Some hostas have differently shaped rhizomes depending on which parent species is involved. In the case of 'Golden Tiara', H. nakaiana was the parent. This species has a rhizome that has a fast growth rate and quickly makes spreading interconnected runners, forming one rhizome. This is still called a rhizome, but one that is sending out smaller, usually elongated parts of stem roots and shoots. H. sieboldii is another example, which has a non-contiguous looking, spreading rhizome connected together. Looking like stolons, they are not, but are elongated rhizomes that produce plants from the nodes. Such spreading rhizomes seen in hostas often have a fast growth rate." "Rhizomes often grow into very large contiguous masses and the center part of such rhizomes dies, while the still living parts of the rhizome form a ring-shaped plant. Gardeners often replace the dead center part with a living rhizome to maintain the huge plant as a single clump. Eventually the ring-shaped rhizome breaks up and forms a ring on non-connected plants, all with their own rhizome." While all hosta are rhizomatous in the technical sense, this feature is more obvious in some species and cultivars that have proportionately long underground runners which extend for a considerable distance from one shoot to the next. At a glance, these plants are distinguishable from other clump-forming hostas in that they display a rather open, spreading habit. BTW, 'Abby' does NOT make this list. Pieter

With Windows XP you can resize your pics by right clicking on the pic, go to Send To and select Mail Recipient... You will then have the option of making your pic smaller... It will come up as an Attachment in an e-mail... From there you can drag the Attachment to another folder or your desktop then delete the e-mail. If you are using your cell phone to take pics to post on the internet make sure you turn off your GPS first !!!... There are bad people out there who can retrieve the GPS coordinates from the pic and find out just where the pic was taken, down to the room in your house! Hugs, Rita

I agree with Pieter that using a color chart or a grey card in a photo would be a way to really establish a more true color value - especially if the photograph is out of context. Color balance in digital media (and even for print labs) is still a floating target. I suppose why Pantone is still a major company in industry/production - different companies look at their physical samples for comparison. As for a grouping of photos, I try to make everything look similar to each other (within reason). As for the challenges regarding color: Auto white balance on a camera can meter incorrectly. Most computer screens aren't color calibrated (and even if they were, they fall out of calibration often). Some people use a ColorMunki or a Spyder. The human eye - as we age, yellows. So, an older person's color perception will lean yellow. Also, even if someone does has a perfect color perception score, our eyes tend to adjust to colors to try to 'normalize' the situation (like how our nose adjusts to a smell & then the smell 'disappears'.) --- But, if you want to have a good, middle of the day 5500 kelvin (aka daylight value) photograph, that is evenly lit - use a diffuser. Seriously, it's almost like cheating in photography. It makes everything look great. They are not that expensive and you can probably still use your camera/iphone in auto mode if you'd like. Why use a diffuser? A diffuser evens out the light - it essentially makes shade. However, the difference here is that it is still true color value from the sun whereas shade from trees tends to look blue. See how harsh the light is on Spencer & the couple's legs, while the couple's faces are evenly lit? So, when photographing hostas, I would suggest using a diffuser when full sun is on the plant. This would even out the lighting, give you a good kelvin value (true color), and make the resulting image look great. (Now, we could also go into setting a custom kelvin value to get accurate color - but, that's a whole other topic and much more in-depth). In the shade from trees, the subject will photograph blue, but you could still use a diffuser to even out dappled lighting.

Unfortunately, I seem to only able to post here because Houzz does not offer me the option of posting in the hosta forum. I don’t know why. Anyone have the answer to that by chance??? debra