Monday, March 30, 2015

New plant (But It's Also an Anthurium)

I'm, like, binging on new Anthurium-buying lately. Two in two months! (Six weeks, even!)

I don't know what this one's called either, and likely will never know, because it's also a Costa Farms product and they don't give a shit.1 I did at least remember to ask Wallace's while I was there, and they were like, sorry, they just ship 'em to us as "6-inch Anthurium," we never get any more information about it than that.

So that's how it's gonna be, I guess. I took a couple stabs at looking for a patent, but patents for red Anthuriums are a dime a dozen, and it doesn't really help to try to narrow it down to "dark red."


But none of this should take away from the plant itself. It may be nameless, but it's also awfully interesting, from a breeding standpoint. The actual blooms aren't anything spectacular, though it's at least a color we haven't seen much of before (a sort of dull dark red, with a streak of brighter red near the midline).


I'm still not a big fan of the saddle-shaped spathes, but I suppose it might be interesting to see what sorts of shapes result from crossing those with a standard or tulip spathe -- maybe I'll wind up with something new. Mostly, though, I bought this one for the foliage:


2

Not only are the leaves all unusually shiny and large, the new foliage is almost black. (I just went and looked at it again to be sure, and that photo makes it look much browner than it is in real life. In real life, it looks like a very very very dark brown-green that is all but black.) I have named varieties and seedlings where the new growth is green (most of 'em), red (0649 "Layona Davenport"),3 orange (0573 "Adore Delano"), pink-red (0105 "Deanne T. Christ"),4 brown (0120 "Eliza Boutisecksis" and lots of others), or brown-with-green-veins (0002 "Alexis Mateo"), but black is new. And would be awesome.5

Have yet to try to pollinate the new acquisition, and I'm not 100% sure it's even going to be possible, but fingers crossed.

-

1 Not that they should have to! I don't expect to be able to communicate with the wholesalers who supply my garbage bags or Q-Tips or milk or whatever. But if you're going to invite communication from the public, it seems like you should at least acknowledge when the public tries to communicate with you. Call me unreasonable.
2 All the pictures I got were crap: it's too large to fit within the black backdrop I have, and it's dark enough that, especially in combination with a black backdrop, the camera doesn't know what's going on and starts making things up. But I promise you, it's awesome in person. (If you like very very large, shiny, and dark-colored leaves, that is.)
3 Recent photo of Layona:

4 Semi-recent picture of Deanne:

The new leaves look more purple-red than anything else, in person. The photo doesn't show that very well.

5 Based just on what traits get me most excited, I think I'm ultimately breeding toward an Anthurium with very large, dark, glossy arrowhead-shaped leaves, large, dark purple standard spathes, non-matching spadix (color to be determined), and dark brown new growth. Not that that's a conscious goal exactly, though now that I'm imagining it, it does seem pretty appealing. So.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

A suggestion as far as photography goes-- Irfanview is a nifty little photo-manipulation program, whose gamma and color levels adjustments have saved me from many a "doesn't have that hue in real life" painting photos... Also, congrats on the new plant.

mr_subjunctive said...

Nadya W-G:

Irfanview's actually what I use. Sometimes photos fail because I'm just not using it well enough, and sometimes they fail because my camera gives Irfanview crap to work with.