Thursday, February 4, 2016

Schlumbergera seedling no. 066

Most notable characteristics of 066A are the slightly unusual color, and the weird rumpled look to the petals. Doesn't make it beautiful, but it maybe qualifies as quirky.


I wound up with 32 possible names from TinEye, and liked seven enough to give them serious consideration. Also threw in two names from the reserve names list, because they kind of fit and why not. So nine options in all. Here we go.

Pterosaur initially seemed kind of workable, but nothing about this flower is smooth enough to evoke the kind of majestic alien soaring that I associate with pterosaurs. Too many petals to serve as wings, and they're pointing in all different directions, sometimes kinked -- I just can't see it, alas.

Daiquiri is also close, but not quite there. For one thing, daiquiris come in a lot of different colors, depending on the fruit involved, and judging from image searches, the closest color match would be the strawberry daiquiri. However, I already have a strawberry name (082 Strawberry Madeleine), as well as a berry name (105A Berry Rhubarb Fool). So plain "Daiquiri" doesn't specify color well enough, and the names that specify color are too close to other names. If I were desperate to keep it in the daiquiri family and still match the color, I could maybe go with Watermelon Daiquiri, but I always imagine daiquiris as light yellow-green anyway. So I can keep the name in mind for later seedlings, but I don't think I'm desperate enough to use it here.

Hydrogen works in that way that certain words and colors go together in my brain (actual hydrogen gas is colorless), but there are other names on the list that work without me having to appeal to my pseudosynesthesia.

The orientation of the flowers in my photos makes the flowers look a little defeated (facing down, petals a little droopy at the ends), which make Rampage and Resistance both seem a little inappropriate, even if the color works.


And now we're at the point where the options stop being easy to eliminate.

Drunk Dancing kind of fits the shape, but I suppose I don't know, from the one flower the seedling has produced so far, whether the blooms are always going to be this shape. Should that matter? Not sure.

The reader-suggested Spicy Coquette works better for me without the "spicy" part, but Coquette is a good name.1 Plus I sort of have a crush on The Coquette, based on her advice blog.

When TinEye gave me Joker, I was pleased, because the bloom shape is a little like that of the jester hats that the jokers in decks of cards usually wear.2

And then Antisocial sort of works with the spiky, slightly off-kilter shape too.


Antisocial is appealing to me, but probably not so much to other people, so I suppose I don't have to keep it. And Drunk Dancing sounds kind of fun and friendly to me, but I don't know how drunk the people you're picturing are; maybe it's not quite as positive in your brain. Plus actual drunkenness is maybe not to be encouraged.

So Joker or Coquette, I suppose. And as much as I think the bloom resembles Joker, I'm feeling more drawn to Coquette, so I'm going with Coquette.

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1 Somehow, I got the impression that "coquette" was approximately synonymous with "tramp" or "slut," but the dictionary meaning is "a woman who endeavors without sincere affection to gain the attention and admiration of men," according to Merriam-Webster, which is kind of nice. I suppose the contemporary male counterpart would be "player."
There is probably a contemporary English word corresponding to "coquette," but I'm not going to look for it because I imagine it's probably mean-spirited, if not fully misogynistic. "Coquette" at least sounds classy 'cause it's French.
2 (I looked, but couldn't find a specific name for the hats; everybody seems to just call them "jester hats," which is boring. There should be some special, Old-English-sounding name for them, like "vingabbit" or "roopscock" or something. Maybe I just didn't look long enough.)


2 comments:

Virginia Burton said...

A coquette is a flirt. Whether that's a pejorative term depends mostly on the feelings of others, e.g. the person being flirted with, the spouse/significant other of that person, and the people observing the flirting.

Pattock said...

The only other term for a jester's hat that I know of is a fool's cap (as in foolscap). I just went to the OED to check that and found that Orchis morio (now Anacamptis morio) was known as fool's ballocks as early as 1578. Morio is from the Greek for fool.

The OED gives a definition closer to "tease" for coquette:

A woman (more or less young), who uses arts to gain the admiration and affection of men, merely for the gratification of vanity or from a desire of conquest, and without any intention of responding to the feelings aroused; a woman who habitually trifles with the affections of men; a flirt.

In early use the notion ranged widely from gallantry, wantonness, or immodesty, to pretty pertness.