Monday, February 16, 2015

Schlumbergera seedling round-up

Okay. So I think we've seen all the Schlumbergera seedlings we're going to see until the fall. Could be wrong, but that's how it looks right now. So here are all twenty-nine of them together:

#008A "Frightened Dog"

#008B "Candor"

#010A "Semantic Satiation"

#012A "Sofa Fort"

#019A "Belevenissen"

#021A "Spider Crab"

#021B "Birthday Dinner"

#022A "Sad Tomato"

#023A "Stoked"

#024A "Safety Vest"

#024B "Bryce Canyon"

#025A "Clownfish"

#026A "Brick Wall"

#027A "Kiln"

#028A "Phil Collen"

#028B "Neon Like"

#030A "Diwali"

#031A "Baby Carrots"

#054A "Helpful Gesture"

#055A "Pumpkin Festival"

#057A "Pyrotechnic"

#060A "Wet Dog"

#061A "Leather Fairy"

#064A "Rose Hoses"

#078A "Art Party"

#083A "Psychedelic Bunny"

#083B "Guy Fawkes Night"

#084A "Downward-Facing Dog"

#088A "Cyborg Unicorn"

And for what it's worth, some of the variation in colors here is because of differences in lighting or camera settings, or the plants just being naturally variable in their bloom colors (both from bloom to bloom but also according to the age of the flower: Schlumbergera blooms don't change as much with time as Anthuriums can, but they do change some), but the seedlings really didn't all bloom in the same shade of orange. Most of them fall pretty neatly into a handful of categories: orange/pink ("Neon Like," "Sofa Fort"), orange/white ("Belevenissen," "Baby Carrots"), red-orange ("Sad Tomato," "Phil Collen"), dark orange ("Clownfish," "Stoked"), light orange ("Bryce Canyon," "Leather Fairy"), and "other" ("Psychedelic Bunny," "Helpful Gesture").

I've started cuttings of ten of these and expect to offer them for sale through this blog at some point, if they don't die and I'm convinced that they've rooted adequately. I haven't done cuttings for every one of the seedlings: some of them just suck and why would you want cuttings (e.g. #060A "Wet Dog"), some of them aren't large enough yet to be able to spare cuttings (e.g. #028A "Phil Collen"), and some of them finished blooming before I came up with a way to keep track of which seedlings were which, so I actually can't take cuttings yet (e.g. #054A "Helpful Gesture"). I'm expecting to be able to take cuttings from three more fairly soon, and if the plants keep blooming sporadically during the spring and summer, I should have most of the good seedlings in propagation, if not actually ready to sell, by the end of summer.

I'll have a post about buying the cuttings once it's warmed up outside, outlining which ones are available and how to go about purchasing one. (There may also be some Anthurium seedlings available in the summer, but again, I don't know for certain that there will be any, and if there are, I don't know which seedlings they'll be.) For the moment, though, posting will slow down until I can get some new material together, and when I do, it's likely to be pretty Anthurium-centric.


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am really happy to see you are able to offer plants for sale again. I remember how you used to do those plant sales before the scale disaster started. Does this mean that the white oil treatment actually seemed to kill off the scale? I really hope it is over for you.

How do you have room for all these seedlings? I imagine your basement must be huge and you must have tons of artificial lights.

mr_subjunctive said...

Anonymous:

Well, the tons of lights part is true, anyway. The basement's never struck me as being particularly huge.

The white oil treatment definitely didn't kill off the thrips, though it knocked their numbers way down. It's less clear whether white oil was useful against the scale; the last sighting in the basement was in December, and the last time I threw out one of the basement Anthuriums for scale was February 2013, and any successes there are probably more due to the zero-tolerance policy than the white oil. I've NEVER seen any scale on any of the Schlumbergeras, and both Anthurium and Schlumbergera get much more closely looked at than the other plants in the house, so I feel relatively certain that if there were a problem on either of them, I'd know about it.

The scale definitely isn't over in the collection at large -- I threw out a Ficus on January 31 because it had scale on it, and some of the Yucca guatemalensises had scale at the same time and got decapitated as a result (this has previously been sufficient to rid them of it, though obviously it's sort of an extreme solution and they're not guaranteed to resprout). I also cut a bunch of branches off of a Ficus in the basement because there was scale on it at some point in I think December. So that's an ongoing problem, and considering the size of the collection, it will probably always be around, but as I get rid of (or cure) some of the more scale-prone plants, the scale seems to have a harder time mounting a comeback than it used to. Things are at least a hell of a lot better than they were in 2012.

Liza said...

Oooh, I love seeing all those Schlum blooms together like that. They're so adorable!

Unknown said...

I will be keeping an eye out for when cuttings go on sale. I have a feeling 'Clownfish' and 'Psychedelic Bunny' will love it here in San Diego.

'Wet Dog' also....maybe?

mr_subjunctive said...

Jeff Sers:

"Psychedelic Bunny" is unlikely to be available anytime soon; it hasn't shown any indication that it's thinking about reblooming, so there's no way for me to tell which cuttings would be from "Psychedelic Bunny" vs. "Guy Fawkes Night" or (possibly) some third seedling in the pot. I only ever saw just the one bloom in the first place, too, which means it's possible that it's not a very floriferous seedling (though it could also just be in a bad location).

It's also possible that I might want to actually try to patent that one for real, in which case I wouldn't want to be selling cuttings until that was done, but I don't know how realistic of a possibility that is.

"Clownfish" is starting to re-bud right now, though, so it will probably wind up for sale eventually.

"Wet Dog?" Really? Why?

Unknown said...

Honestly, I just really like 'Wet Dog's shape of the petals. It's different and I like that.

Diana said...

I'm big on both Guy Fawks Night and Psychadelic Bunny. I saw your note that you probably won't have them for sale and I has a sad.