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Under Hosta, the names
H. japonica and H. caerulea
were placed on a list of rejected names per Article 69 of the
ICBN or, at least, considered ambiguous names. Only H.
‘Lancifolia’ still figures in Hosta nomenclature but it
represents a sterile, nonperpetuating hybrid and so has joined
the ranks of cultivar names and has been reduced to cultivar
rank in accordance with the International Code of Nomenclature
for Cultivated Plants.
The generic name Hosta itself is a later homonym. Our favorite
name "Hosta" is in actuality an "illegitimate
name" by today's taxonomic rules and we would have to find
another name for the genus. Fortunately, in
1905 taxonomists of yesteryear got together at the International
Botanical Congress (IBC) of Vienna and decided to do something
about this confusing "naming game." When two names
exist for the same genus, in our case Funkia and Hosta, one of
these names can be conserved and take precedence over the other
name in botanical nomenclature. Today we know that the name
Hosta won and that is why we no longer use the name Funkia. The
Germans and Scandinavians still use "Funkie" as a
horticultural name for Hosta, but they have settled on Hosta as
the correct botanical generic name. When hosta aficionados talk
about species, they usually apply the morphological species
concept, defined as a population or group of populations that
differs morphologically from other populations. For example, we
can distinguish between a daylily and a hosta because they have
different flowers. Species have been identified and defined in
this way since well before the beginning of recorded history.
The morphological species concept is criticized because more
recent genetic data reveal that genetically distinct populations
may look very similar, i.e., have a similar morphology. On the
other hand, large morphological differences sometimes exist
between very closely related populations, when chromosome data
is applied. Nonetheless, most species known have been described
solely from morphological data.
In Hosta nomenclature, each species is
assigned a formal, scientific name, for example: Hosta
ventricosa. In the
example, Hosta is the genus name and ventricosa is the species
epithet. Species are the basic rank of all living beings on
Earth, from the tiniest virus or microbe to humans. Certainly,
in this commentary we deal with the Plant Kingdom. Biological
classification is based on the work of Carl von Linné (born as
Carl Nilsson Linnæus, 1707 ― 1778), a Swedish botanist,
who laid the foundations for modern binomial nomenclature. His
system of naming plants (also known as “Linnaean taxonomy”)
is still used as the basis for plant taxonomy. Accordingly, the
ICBN uses a legal definition that elevates species to be a
fundamental unit of study in plant taxonomy (the practice of
classifying plants) and given a name in accordance with the
articles and rules of the ICBN. A number of species make up a
genus, and each succeeding higher rank is so nested into the
next higher rank, genera into family, families into order,
orders into classes, classes into division and all of these
combined make up and are nested into the Plant Kingdom. The ICBN
allows species to be further subdivided into subspecies,
varieties, and forms. The principal higher ranks can also be
subdivided further, i.e., Division into Superdivision and
Subdivision as seen in the following overall ranking and
placement of taxa for Hosta. In the ICBN, this order is fixed
and cannot be altered:
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The meaning of Joksan
is unknown, but it may have originated
from the Chinese name for Hosta plantaginea, which is cultivated
in China under the name Yu-san 
The Japanese translation of Yu-San is Tamano-kanzashi 
which means "jewel of the hairpiece" (Maekawa 1940) and
is in fact the Japanese name for H. plantaginea. Vulgo Giboosi
means the "common hosta," while Giboosi altera
translates to "other hosta." The Swedish naturalist Carl
Peter Thunberg travelled to London to inspect the Japanese
collection of Kaempfer. Thunberg noticed the lack of botanical
names, so assigned the binomial Aletris japonica. Thus, Aletris
was the first generic name used for Hosta (Thunberg 1980). It was
not long before this arrangement was found to be rather unnatural.
Today, Aletris is a genus name in the Liliaceae (Lily Family)
applied to plants native to North America. One of these plants is
commonly known as colicroot or colic weed. Long ago, it was used
by American Natives for medicinal purposes. Thunberg (1784)
transferred the genus to Hemerocallis (Daylily) and this transfer
started a long-standing association between these genera. Looking
at drawings 52 and 166, it is obvious that these plants were not
what we now know as day lilies (Hemerocallis). Trattinnick (1812)
proposed the first independent generic name Hosta and included a
Latin diagnosis. He also moved the three species from Hemerocallis
to Hosta, as Hosta japonica, H. lancifolia, and
H. caerulea.
However, transfer of these names was made without mentioning
synonyms or descriptions so was for these reasons illegitimate
under the nomenclature rules. The naming was still rather
confusing because the names Hemerocallis japonica and Hosta
japonica were at the same time applied to Hosta plantaginea,
H. 'Tokudama'
and H. 'Lancifolia', which caused much confusion.
