Excerpted by David Leider, Klehm Nursery, Illinois from a talk given by Bob Solberg on hosta growing presented at the 1996 Winter Scientific Meeting of the American Hosta Society, January 27, 1996. As a nurseryman and grower of hostas, I watch what happens to the plants both above and below the soil, as opposed to gardeners who are mainly concerned with what happens above the soil. In order to understand hosta physiology, it is important to know that a hosta is a monocot and what that means. Monocots have several characteristics that separate them from dicots. First is the number of seed leaves.
Monocots have one.
Monocot is a shortening of mono, meaning one, and cotyledon, seed leaf. A newly germinated seed will only have one leaf, with one root. It takes some time for a second leaf to develop. The second difference is leaf venation. Monocot leaves have parallel veins versus the branching veins of dicots.