Schlumbergera seedling no. 215

Not an incredibly interesting Schlumbergera seedling. I mean, it's pretty, but we've seen like ten thousand orange Schlumbergeras by this point and it's difficult to get excited about another one. Also it only produced one bloom, from which I got exactly one photo. So we'd best get to naming.

I had four name finalists but decided that one was stupid, so I dropped it at the last minute, leaving us with Apollo, Aqua Regia, and Unashamed.

Apollo is the Greek and Roman god of music, the sun and light, healing and disease, prophecy and truth, and poetry. I considered the name previously for 089A Halloween Moon and 114A Gallant Fox, and rejected it on the grounds that it wasn't interesting enough and that there's plenty of stuff named for Apollo already, respectively.

Aqua Regia is the mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids mainly used in gold refining. (It has a fancy name because it's been known for a long time.) I considered it previously for seedling 057B Oxomoco, and rejected it on the grounds that 057B was redder than aqua regia normally is (it's usually orange or yellow-orange).

Unashamed doesn't come from anywhere in particular, but I guess seemed appropriate for such a strong color.

So. Unashamed might be more appealing if I hadn't just named a seedling 165A Assertive. Not that the words are synonyms, but they're sort of related ideas, connected via the idea of directness, not being shy, maybe a little confrontational.

The two remaining words both have the problem of being Latin, or Latin-adjacent, which is a no-no for official cultivar naming, but Aqua Regia is much more obviously so than Apollo is. On the other hand, Apollo is much more likely to be in use already; people name things for Apollo all the time.¹ And this particular seedling is unlikely to ever be officially registered, which means that the name is just for me and I can call it whatever I want, Latin or not.

I considered combining the two names. The most logical combination would be Apollo Rex, but that's already taken (a proposed TV show; a band). So I thought maybe an anagram?

The problem with anagrams is that there's a Q involved in "apollo aqua regia," which severely limits the number of ways to use all the letters. However, the anagram site I linked will also, if you ask, give you a list of the words that can be made from the input letters, whether or not the whole set of letters can be rearranged into words or not.² So I looked at the candidate words for a while, and saw "Oriole," which I've considered as a possible seedling name in the past because they're orange birds.³ "Allure" was also on the list, and I kind of like how difficult "oriole allure" is to say clearly. So forget Apollo, forget Aqua Regia, I'm going with 215A Oriole Allure.

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¹ To illustrate, check out what the International Orchid Registry comes up with for orchids named "Apollo:"
• Angulocaste Apollo
• Brassidium Apollo
• Catasetum × apolloi
• Cattleya Apollo (1890)
• Cattleya Apollo (1908)
• Cattleya Apollo Eleven
• Cattleya Apollonia
• Cattleya Seagulls Apollo
• Clowesetum Jumbo Apollo
• Cymbidium Apollo
• Cymbidium Apollo Beach
• Cymbidium Apollo Eleven
• Cymbidium Blue Apollo
• Cymbidium Foxfire Apollo
• Cymbidium Kulnura Apollo
• Dendrobium Apollo
• Epidendrum Apollon Valley
• Epidendrum Big Green Apollo
• Luisanda Apollo
• Oncidium Apollo
• Oncidium Apollo Bay
• Oncidium Apollo Eight
• Paphiopedilum Apollo
• Paphiopedilum Apollo Creed
• Paphiopedilum Hsinying Apollo
• Paphiopedilum Miya Apollon
• Phalaenopsis Apollo
• Phalaenopsis Apollo Eight
• Phalaenopsis Apollo Eleven
• Phalaenopsis Apollo Fifteen
• Phalaenopsis Apollo Fourteen
• Phalaenopsis Apollo Nine
• Phalaenopsis Apollo Ten
• Phalaenopsis Apollo Twelve
• Phalaenopsis Apollo's Emerald
• Phalaenopsis Apollo's Gold
• Phalaenopsis Brother Apollo
• Phalaenopsis Golden Apollon
• Phalaenopsis KC Apollo
• Phalaenopsis Nobby's Apollo
• Phalaenopsis Sogo Apollo
• Phalaenopsis Sogo Apollo Sun
• Phalaenopsis Tai-Kan Apollo
• Phalaenopsis Younghome Apollo
• Phragmipedium Apollo
• Rhyncholaeliocattleya Apollo
• Zelenchostele Apollo
If there's not already a Schlumbergera 'Apollo,' surely it's only a matter of time.
² E.g. the longest word that can be made from the letters in "Apollo Aqua Regia" is the nine-letter "paralegal," though there are no full anagrams containing "paralegal" because the letters left over are a, i, o, o, q, & u.
³ Well, orange and black. And usually the orange is substantially yellowish. Though there are species of oriole closer to this seedling's color.