How Does One Identify Infected Plants at a Nursery?
First, learn to ID the ways it disfigures hosta leaves so you will know if when you do see it. While no hosta cultivar has been proven to be more suseptible to the Virus than others, some of the most widely distributed cultivars are often found to be infected. H. Sum & Substance and H. Gold Standard and cultivars derived from them including H. Striptease (a sport of Gold Standard) is often a victim of the virus when they are found in big box stores. One should follow two guidelines when confronted by plants that are suspicious. First, assume that if a group of plants of the same cultivar contains even one suspect plant, that all plants in the group may be infected. There are two reasons for this. The primary method of commercial reproduction today in hostas is tissue culture. If an infected mother plant was used to create the batch of plants (which easily might number a thousand or more all told) all plants from that group may eventually show signs of infection. In other words, the tis
