Who doesn’t love hostas, those hardy herbaceous perennials that require so little attention to perform beautifully year after year? The original owners of our house had planted a few large hostas, cultivar name unknown, on either side of the porch on the creek side of the house. Fifteen or so years later, when we began major renovations, we had a new deck built right over the area where the hostas grew. They have continued to thrive under the deck and provide us with baby hostas whenever we need to replace a few.

Hostas, also called plantain lilies, are native to Japan, Korea, and China. In the United States, hostas grow in USDA Hardiness Zones 3-7/8, depending on the cultivar, of which there are thousands, belonging to at least 70 species. New cultivars are developed every year.

Once considered members of the lily family, hostas have been reclassified and placed in the asparagus family. To complicate matters, the genus Hosta previously was known as Funkia, and you may still com...