Anthurium no. 0206 "Marcia Dimes"

0206 "Marcia Dimes" is something of a chameleon: if I'm comparing her to the pink spathes (like 0239 "Russ Teanale"), she's purplish-pink, but compared to the purplish-pink spathes (like 0231 "Rhea Listick"), she's pink. I mean, this isn't the most amazing thing in the world or anything, but it's unexpected: Russ is the only pink / yellow combination I've gotten,¹ but there are a whole mess of purple-pink / yellow and purple-pink / white blooms, and they're all very close in color.² I'm sort of surprised that it's possible to wind up with a color that's in between pink and purple-pink.

In any case. It's possible that this will be one of those cases where the first bloom is a different color from the later ones, too. Whatever color Marcia lands on, it'll be nice enough, I'm sure -- I am particularly fond of both the pink / yellow and purple-pink / yellows, so I don't think Marcia could actually get this wrong.

The leaves have two noteworthy qualities. The first is that they have an unusual texture. I spent a while trying to come up with a good description and couldn't, so I'll just leave it at, Marcia's leaves are less glossy, and the veins less prominent, so there's sort of an impression of smoothness happening.

This actually isn't something I like particularly -- I prefer glossier leaves, and more complicated-looking venation³ -- and it's not unique at all, but it's particularly noticeable with Marcia.

The other notable feature is that the thrips have mostly left the foliage alone. (The spathe too, as far as that goes.) This by itself would mean Marcia's a keeper, but then to have a nice bloom, in a pleasant / interesting color, on top of that? Yowza.

The plant is also relatively compact so far: long internodes have dampened my enthusiasm about a lot of the other seedlings. Among other things, plants with long internodes are much, much harder to water, because the plants get tangled in one another.

So there you have it. Not the best seedling ever,⁴ and not even my favorite from the recent batch of first-time blooms,⁵ but still in the top 25% or so of the blooms to date.

Next post: Anthurium no. 0510 "Victoria 'Porkchop' Parker," who is interesting even though she hasn't bloomed yet.

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¹ Unless you count 0040 "Ivy Winters." I'm not sure I do -- Ivy was sometimes a little too orange to call "pink." (The past tense is because Ivy is now living in Texas, not because she's dead. In case you were worried.)
²

Top row, L-R: 0035 "Alyssa Edwards," 0234 "Ross Koz," 0085 "Carson Trucks"
Bottom row, L-R: 0231 "Rhea Listick," 0259 "Tasha Salad"
³ More like these:

0005 "Chad Michaels" (L) and 0076 "Bob Humbug" (R)
Chad has the sort of color I like, plus an interesting shape and a high gloss; Bob I like mostly because the leaves show all the veins (which may be more obvious if you see the full size version of the photo) and are a bit thicker and stiffer, giving it a sort of leathery, reptilian texture. They both look like they'd be interesting to touch. Marcia, on the other hand, gives the impression that touching her leaves would be sort of like touching the back of a computer monitor, or some other matte plastic thing. Which is not that far off, actually.
⁴ The very short list of seedlings in the running for "best seedling ever:" 0231 "Rhea Listick," 0334 "Jean Poole," 0330 "Faye Quinette," 0120 "Eliza Boutisecksis," 0276 "Zach Religious." If the house were on fire and I could save one and only one of the seedlings, it'd probably be one of those five. But please don't set my house on fire so we can find out for sure, okay?
⁵ (That would be 0360 "Heidi Gosique," whom you will get to meet soon.)