Alas, it was not meant to be. An interesting hosta man named Ed Eslager died recently... last year I think... but he spent much of the last decade registering many hostas. One of his goals was to have both the first and the last listing in the alphabetical listing of hostas... and to reach hosta immortality by holding that position forever.
When I saw the registration of H. 'A Many-Splendored Thing' by Ed in 1999 I thought it very clever, though I felt bad for Dennis and Aardvark. It seemed to be a bit of a slight of hand... but it met the old criteria for naming a cultivar, which included a three word maximum for the name and all words commonly used in a modern language. Ed moved to the top of the list.
A M-s T is the title of a hit movie from 1955 starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones (playing an Asian doctor - apparently Hollywood could not find a Chinese actor, continuing the fine Charlie-Chan tradition of putting a Caucasian in black wig and taping her eyes into a parody of an epicanthic fold...) The movie won no major awards for script or acting and is pretty forgetable, but the sappy, romantic, overblown title song won the oscar that year. I can't walk past this hosta in the garden without belting out a couple of lines. Everyone covered the song... Sinatra, Martin, Peggy Lee... but it is still the original version by the Four Aces that resonates for most of us "of a certain age."
I don't have this year's edition, but in the 2007 Hosta Finder, A Many-Splendored Thing is the first entry. But Ed wasn't satisfied with that. He knew somebody just had to pick another phrase starting with A and continuing with a second word with an initial letter before m.
I can't say I really approve of the results of this thinking. For a while, H. 'A B-1 Bomber' was first. To me, that is just a stupid name... like naming your son Percy or Sue out of a twisted sense of humor. Now I see that the Hosta Library lists two even before A B-1. H. 'A 10 Hut' - which to me is totally over the top, violating all the old naming rules, as that phrase is really just a mispelling of the military pronounciation of the command to come to attention... and at the very top H. 'A 1 4 The Money' - and why would they allow registration of a text-message shortcut for the entirely reasonable and appropriate "A One-for-the-money"?
And don't get me started on the end of the alphabet. I had H. 'ZZ Topp' in the pipeline for registration when they let Ed register H. 'ZZZZ, a Sleeping Beauty' which is both senseless and incorrect, as the common usage of "zees" for sleeping is three Zs in a row, not four.
End of rant. Love these names or hate them, you still have to give Ed Eslager credit for some long late creative nights!
The first three in the list are pretty unimpressive to me. A 1 looks like an undulata, and the next two are streakers - and isn't naming an unstable streaker a pretty questionable activity?
But A M-s Thing is a pretty nice hosta.
Still, for today's NPOTD - you thought I forgot that this was NPOTD and I had to actually post a pic, didn't you?! - I'm going to go with Savory's Aardvark. Not everyone loves the subtle variegations in hostas, but I do. Aardvark is unlikely to grab the focal point in a hosta bed dominated by more dramatic variegated plants... Touch of Class and Remember Me and Orange Marmalade are near it in my garden, and those are the ones that draw people off of my deck for a closer look. But some, having arrived at a closer vantage point, share my interest in Aardvark. It is a medium-sized plant with medium-sized leaves, but the fine pebbling of the leaves and the thick substance give them a really nice character. Probably will never break the top 25 in popularity, and it may even fade into obscurity due to the four names ahead of it on the alphabetical list - but "Attention must be paid!"
