We have already written on our web site that some cultivars of the hostas, daylilies and other perennials are time to time very similar. We mentioned how similar hosta Liberty, Majesty or Ivory Coast are, that hosta White Bikini and Risky Business are almost the same... This is perhaps not surprising, since only the registered daylily cultivars already in the world number an incredible 80,000 and there are over 6,000 cultivars of hostas.

In 2018, we cooperated in an international project focused on the verifcation of the similarity between selected hosta cultivars. Not only our company, but also other European growers have provided hosta cultivars Catherine, Grand Marquee and Touch of Class for the  comparison. Tests were carried out by Ben Zonneveld from the Naturalis Museum in the Netherlands, in cooperation with Vladimir Mirka from the Czech Republic and Warren Pollock, a hosta experts from Czech Republic and the United States. The results showed that there are no statistically signifcant differences between the cultivars tested for leaf thickness or genetics. The differences between Catherine, Grand Marquee, and Touch of Class are so small, that they can be considered the same. This means, that one and the same hosta is sold under three different names in the European area. Why this is so, nobody knows…

Despite these fndings, our company decided to continue to offer these plants in our catalog under the names Catherine, Grand Marquee and Hosta Touch of Class. This is because new fndings based on other parameters may fnd some minor differences between these cultivars in the future, and because there is no reason why these cultivars should be truly identical. Therefore, it is necessary to wait for a confrmation of this fnding by further tests. We recommend that you consider these results when purchasing these cultivars in our own or any other shop and buy just one of these three cultivars. Simply do not buy one each of Catherine, Grand Marquee, or Touch of Class, as they are so phenotypically similar that you will not feel any difference between them. Unless, that is, you are a passionate collector.

The results of this study will be published soon in professional journals.

Hosta Grand Marquee

Hosta Touch of Class

Hosta Catherine

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