Everything's Coming Up Anthuriums

(The title is more amusing if you imagine it sung by Ethel Merman.)

I don't know if it's meaningful, but lately it seems like I've been running into a lot of stuff about Anthurium cultivars, particularly A. andraeanum. I'm also noticing that the aforelinked post is getting a lot of hits, more than most of the other plant profile pages.¹

Bafflingly, it seems to be impossible for me to get a good picture of my own plants. I can't figure it out. They're really not normally this blurry.

So, with that in mind, I'm doing the first PATSP link dump about Anthuriums. Here we go:

Water Roots did a long piece on Anthurium recently, which is very much worth checking out.

Anthurium is also one of the fastest-growing segments of the horticulture industry, apparently because there are suddenly many highly-trained plant cultivators working round the clock to create new varieties, some of which are legitimately exciting and cool. Not all of these are necessarily available yet in the town (or continent, alas) where you live, but even so, the Earth is now home to Anthurium cultivars in the following colors:

*pink
*bright red
*white, with a pink spadix
*another pink
*pink veins on cream background, which over time shade into pink-on-pink, with a white spadix tipped in orange and green²
*lemon-yellow spathe with a white, yellow and green spadix²
*a double-spathed brown flower with red veins
*a slightly orangish red
*red with green "ears"
*brown

At work, we're going to be getting another shipment of tropical plants from Florida at the end of the month, which has me very excited: we're supposed to have just a ton of Anthuriums in there (including Anthurium crystallinum 'Mehani:' I don't intend to buy one, 'cause I don't think I could keep it alive, but I'm curious about how they're going to look), as well as a Dracaena I want ('Art'), and a whole mess of Haworthias. It's going to be an expensive shipment for me, I'm betting, even though I am just about sick of losing entire days to plant-watering and I have no places for any more plants anyway. WCW³ is almost beside herself with anticipation over a batch of Vanilla orchids -- not only have I never seen her that excited before, I've very nearly never seen anyone over the age of twelve that excited about anything.⁴

My own Anthuriums (and thank you for asking) aren't actually doing all that well at the moment; I didn't clue in to the change in season, so I was keeping them too wet, and they've dropped some leaves. I think we're going to pull out of this, though, relatively soon. This is happening to a degree with the ones at work, too.

-

¹ It would not surprise me if this was a popular page solely because the title has the word "hooker" in it. I can't decide whether or how much this bothers me.
² WANT!
³ (Do I need to keep explaining that this stands for "wonderful co-worker," and is meant sincerely, or no?)
⁴ Just in passing, I'd like to mention that this is one of the most wonderful things about my job. Previously, I worked in a couple grocery stores, and people go to grocery stores because they have to, not because they want to, and this shows up in how they deal with staff, and other customers. Not a good time. People come to look at houseplants, on the other hand, because they want to, by and large, and consequently most of them are in a really good mood. It's nice to see people see the plants, and get excited about a find, or about learning something (a customer just yesterday was just giddy when she found out that sometimes you can grow Citrus from cuttings and have it bloom). That WCW and I occasionally also get to behave like this is just gravy.