Friday, November 11, 2011

Rumble Among the Jungle, match 7.1 (***FINAL MATCH***)

First, the results of match 6.2:

6.2 was very close; Echeveria spp. and their relatives and Haworthia spp. were essentially stem and stem the whole way through. In the end, Haworthia won by a leaf (2 votes), 64 to 62, and advances to the final match.

Which happens now. So here it is. Are you ready?

(Are you sure? You don't sound ready. . . .)

Match 7.1
Schlumbergera cvv. (holiday/Thanksgiving/Christmas cactus) vs. Haworthia spp.

Center and top left: Schlumbergera 'Caribbean Dancer;' others are NOID.


Top row, L-R: Haworthia tessellata (?), H. NOID.
Middle row, L-R: Haworthia limifolia var. ubomboensis, H. cymbiformis (?), assortment.
Bottom row, L-R: Haworthia attenuata, H. limifolia var. limifolia.




15 comments:

Joseph said...

Wow... I can't believe it is actually come to the end. And I would have NEVER guessed I'd be voting between these two for the final match! I wonder, I wonder who will carry the final battle?

Long Haired Lady Rider said...

O.
M.
G.

I can't freaking believe these are the semifinalists.

Sincerely,

A Very Disappointed LadyRider

P.S. Still love your blog anyways

Jenn said...

This has been fun. Hope you found it worth all the work (yeesh! The work man!)

Paul said...

I do expect the Schlums to walk away with it at this point. I'm surprised in a way they made it this far. Wouldn't have been my choice, though they do have nice flowers. I wonder how they would have fared if this had started in late winter/spring and had ended in summer?

mr_subjunctive said...

Greensparrow / Long Haired Lady Rider:

I'm half-surprised; I would never have thought Haworthia would make it this far.

Schlumbergera is less surprising to me: I figure they're commonly sold, not too hard to grow, and relatively easy to flower, so there's a good chance a lot of voters have had good experiences with them. It was actually one of my two picks for the overall winner, with Saintpaulia being the other. (Saintpaulia has all the same characteristics, and more vocal fans, so I actually figured Saintpaulia would win, but Schlumbergera was my second choice.)

The one I'd hoped would win, though I knew it wouldn't, was Aglaonema, and it did at least make it to the fourth round.

But yeah, I'm not sure how Haworthia wound up here. Not saying it's unworthy exactly, but I wouldn't have guessed this in a million years, either. (My original guess for the finalist from the second half of the matches was Hippeastrum, but it got knocked out in the second round.)

Unknown said...

lol, how did it come to this? I guess we only have ourselves to be disappointed in. Minus me of course.

Tom said...

Thank GOD Haworthia beat out Echeveria (cuz you know...they're so different and not at all similar...). I can at least be happy with either outcome (though I'm pulling for Christmas Cactus!)

danger garden said...

Really? This is it? The end...wow, never would have thought it would end like this.

Michael said...

Meh.

Nancy in Sun Lakes AZ said...

I agree that I am surprised that Haworthia has made it to the final round. I figured on Schlums to go the distance, but thought African Violets would be the ones doing battle with it. I do like and grow Haworthias but I have to go with the Schlumbergera because I like the colorful flowers and I've grown them for about 40 years!

Emily said...

I wonder if either of these contestants would even make the overall top five if we were all polled across all initial entrants...

I do consistently like Haworthia, though. But they're currently losing by a lot, so I think I'm about to be disappointed again :(. Not that Schlumbergera aren't ok plants, but I've had several suddenly tank for no good reason and also have a hard time getting buds to actually open.

mr_subjunctive said...

Emily:

I very much doubt that Haworthia would make the list if people were just polled straightforwardly. Schlumbergera might, though; I've seen it come up on people's top-plants lists often enough to think it would at least have a chance. The more common and familiar plants (Sansevieria, Saintpaulia, Phalaenopsis, Spathiphyllum) would have an advantage, though, just because wider exposure would naturally lead to a larger group of fans. I might consider a poll for which plant the voters think should have won, but I'm not sure everybody wouldn't be disappointed by those results as well.

Disappointment was sort of the logical outcome of the experiment, not that I recognized this before starting it. Only one was going to win, and the only way everybody's favorite plant was going to win was if everybody had the same favorite plant. Which we already knew wasn't the case, and would have made for boring spectating.

There are a lot of different ways to interpret the (assumed) Schlumbergera win, and I'm not sure I've settled on one just yet, but it's something I'm thinking about a lot.

RMR said...

Nooooooooooooo!

Long Haired Lady Rider said...

Maybe we should have had betting.

Angelina said...

love the pictures, enjoyed your writings too.

Got two of those Christmas Cactus from the grocery isle.

And those pointy succulents, whatever its name?

I sort of accidentally become a houseplant owner, since the weather is getting cold (-7C here in Ottawa ON Canada, and could be -32C in winter), so I end up becoming a houseplant owner. Love the vivid pictures, ID's for those plants I randomly pick up at the grocery isle.

Keep on writing, thanks for the priceless information and the chuckle!:)

Angelina