Hostas have been cultivated in China, Korea and Japan for centuries, used in shrines and around private homes.

Englebert Kaempfer (1651-1716), a German doctor/botanist with the Dutch East India Company, was the first Westerner to see, draw, and describe a hosta while working in Japan.

Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828), a Swedish doctor/botanist with the Dutch East India Company, collected 900 plants from Japan, and renamed hostas, placing them in the genus Hemerocallis.  Two species of hostas, H. plantaginea and H. ventricosa arrived in Europe from China in 1790.

Leopold Trattinick (1761-1848), an Austrian botanist, proposed the genus name Hosta to honor a fellow botanist, Nicholas Host.

Kurt Sprengel, in 1817, placed hostas in the  genus Funkia in honor of a collector/botanist, named after Heinrich Christian Funck (1771–1839), Prussian botanist.

Philipp von Siebold (1791-1866), a doctor/botanist working for the Dutch, brought many species of hostas from Japan to Europe, including H. 'Undulata Univittata'.

In 1830,  Hosta sieboldiana (now H. 'Sieboldiana') was sent to England from a botanic garden in Germany.

Robert Fortune (1813-1880), a Scottish botanist working for the Royal Horticultural Society and later for the East India Company, collected plants from China and Japan, including H. 'Fortunei'.

Thomas Hogg (1819-1892), an American working for the U.S. government in Japan, sent plants to his nursery in the New York City area of the United States.

Botanists continued working on the classification of hosta species. These included a Swedish taxonomist, Dr. Nils Hylander, and a Dutch taxonomist, Dr. Karel Hensen. In the 1930's, an American taxonomist, Liberty Hyde Bailey and a Professor in England,  W. Stearn, also divided hostas by species.

Dr Fumio Maekawa, a Japanese botanist, published his classification of hostas called 'The Genus Hosta' at Tokyo University in 1940, which became widely accepted by  Western botanists.

Mrs. Frances Williams, from Massachusetts, began collecting hostas from around the world for her garden. She kept accurate notes and passed on many varieties since the 1930's.  She bought a yellow edge hosta which she found growing at Bristol Nurseries, Connecticut,  which she grew and distributed to fellow gardeners. It was later named Hosta 'Frances Williams' and became the most popular hosta ever raised.  Interest in hostas was evident by landscape designers in the 1950's and 1960's.

Eric Smith (1917-1986), a vice-president of the British Hosta & Hemerocallis Society, propagated many good hybrids, especially in the Tardiana Group.  He exchanged many hosta hybrids with Alex Summers, the first President of The American Hosta Society.

In 1966, the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum became the International Registration Authority for Hosta.

In 1968, The American Hosta Society was founded by Alex Summers, its first president. Today the Society has about 3,000 members in States from coast to coast.

In the 1970's, the Tardiana hybrids were distributed throughout the United States. Also in the 1970's, Paul Aden, the world's most prolific hosta hybridizer, began introducing many new cultivars. He also authored The Hosta Book, published in 1988.

In 1985, Barry Yinger, with the U.S. National Arboretum, lead an expedition to Korea, bringing back two species, Hosta yingeri and H. jonesii.

In 1987, Brian Matthew placed Hosta in a family of its own, Hostaceae.  Today, the Hosta family includes about 43 different species, two coming from China and the rest from Korea and Japan.  There are  well over 1,000 cultivars grown, with a great diversity in size, shape, texture and color.

In 1991, a massive reference work about hostas by W. George Schmid was published, The Genus Hosta.

In 1995, members of the American Hosta Society visited Japan and collected several rare hostas.

2000 - Mark R. Zilis published The Hosta Handbook which included information on over 1,500 hosta species and cultivars.

2009 - The New Encyclopedia of Hostas by Diana Grenfell and Michael Shadrack (2009)

2009 - Mark R. Zilis published The Hostapedia which included information on over 7,000 hosta species and cultivars.