If you love hostas that bring a sense of excitement to the shade garden, Light the Match will catch your eye—and hold it. This small, mound-forming beauty ignites the season with bright yellow leaves that blush red when touched by the sun in spring. As summer unfolds, the red fades and the foliage mellows into warm yellow/chartreuse, finally deepening to soft green by autumn—like a slow burn that glows all season long.
 
Each lance-shaped leaf has gentle ripples along the margin, adding movement and life to the clump. Red scapes rise in midsummer, carrying pale lavender tubular blooms that play beautifully against the yellow foliage. Perfect for bright shade, Light the Match adds a spark of contrast in mixed plantings or container displays.
 
Collector’s Corner
Introduced by Doug Ruff, Light the Match is the result of crossing (H. ‘Swoosh’ × H. ‘Raving Beauty’) with H. ‘First Blush’. Its red-flushed spring foliage is a direct nod to First Blush, but its compact, tidy form and wavy yellow leaves make it stand apart from its lineage. Collectors will appreciate its color evolution—one of the few hostas that truly “changes face” with each season. Grown from an original seedling in Buffalo, Minnesota, this cultivar captures the fleeting brilliance of flame in plant form.