Yet another Anthurium-seedling update

So the first Anthurium seedling flower (on #59, "Bijoux Tuit"¹) has developed, opened, and died. Since I first reported the bud in September, that's only about ten weeks from start to finish, which is a lot faster than I expected. But Bijoux has a second flower already beginning to unfurl.²

Bob Humbug's (#76) second flower has now aborted like the first, which is starting to concern me. How am I supposed to breed him for his nice foliage if he never produces any flowers? Also, I'd reported a bud on Elijah Sturdabowtit (#118), but that one also aborted.

That still leaves us with ten plants with blooms in varying stages of development, though, and a few more have opened since the last Anthurium seedling update. Hence this post.

Deena Sequins (#108)

Deena did eventually get around to opening. The color is less interesting than I had hoped for from her, considering that I'd really like to have a nice solid purple purple, like her mother, but on the other hand, it's a little different, she's the first one to have a spadix that matches the spathe, and the foliage seems solid. Better than most. Definitely better than her mother (whose foliage has always been crappy for me).

Deena is also the first Anthurium I've seen thrips on, unfortunately, and the spathe has some irregular brown edges on the base and one side that are likely from drought stress. So she's not perfect, but she's at least different. At this point in the process, I'm willing to accept different. And she has a second flower in progress, so maybe this was just a practice bloom. We'll see how it goes.

Depending on the light, the flowers are red to red-violet; definitely not the same as Bijoux, but it's hard to name exactly how they're different. A little darker, a little more purple.

Dave Trading (#282)

I'm a little disappointed with Dave's color, which didn't photograph well here (bad lighting) but is basically the same as Bijoux and 'Gemini' -- pinkish-red with a yellow spadix. On the positive side, Dave's got a larger, flatter spathe, with no brittle edges from drought stress, so he may nevertheless be good breeding stock.³


Rudy Day (#238)

Sort of a mix of nice traits, with Rudy: he's got a color similar to Sal, flat spathes like Dave, nice foliage like Bob. Not really the best at anything, but decent at lots of stuff. And he photographs well.

Rowan DeBoate (#235)
In late October, I said that Zach Religious (#276) and Rowan were ones to watch, because they both had unusually light-colored buds so far. Zach has since darkened to a medium pink, definitely lighter than Bijoux / Dave / 'Gemini,' but not as much lighter as I'd hoped, so I'm less excited about him. Rowan has also darkened, from ivory to a pale pink.

That might continue as the inflorescence develops, but it seems like the spathe is pretty close to opening already, and I could be perfectly happy with a color slightly darker than this.

So that's the report. There are still four seedlings not mentioned elsewhere in this post that have buds forming:

• Peaches Christ (#26) and Sawyer Ad (#245) both look like they're going to be similar to Bijoux / Dave / 'Gemini.'
• Aurora Boreanaz (#46) looks like it's going to abort, but it'll be medium pink or pinkish-purple if it develops.
• Erin Dirtylondry (#126) is the same ivory color that Rowan was a few weeks ago, so I'm expecting a light pink.

And that's that. I appreciate y'all bearing with the Anthurium posts; I know some of y'all probably don't even like Anthuriums that much, and even those of you who do may not need this much detail.⁴

-

¹ Surely I don't need to keep explaining about the drag queen thing, do I?
² Unfortunately, the new flower is also weirdly misshapen, and looks like it's probably going to tear and crack, like the first one did. This might be because of the care she's gotten -- maybe it's too hot, maybe too bright -- or it could be that she's growing too fast, and her spathes are always going to do this. Time will tell. It also occurred to me for the first time, while writing this post, how appropriate "Bijoux Tuit" is for the very first plant to bloom: it wasn't planned that way. All the more appropriate if it's in such a hurry to bloom that it's tearing its flowers apart in the process.
One hopes that "Sal Monella" and "Rudy Day" are never as appropriate.
³ So far, really, all the plants that have produced fully-developed flowers have something going for them, in terms of being useful for breeding: Bijoux and Sal Monella bloom when still very young. Dave's got large, nicely-formed flowers. Sal has a nice solid red color and a decent shape. Deena has the whole spathe-spadix matching thing (which is not necessarily desirable, but it's not necessarily not desirable, either). Bijoux, Sal, and Deena have been quick to produce second blooms. Etc.
No doubt I'll eventually get to a point where I'm like, ho hum, another pinkish-red like all the other pinkish-reds, but we're not there yet.
⁴ This was a minor motivation for the drag-queen names, actually: the logic being that if you're not interested in the process, you might be momentarily amused by the names.
The main motivation was to make it easier for me to keep straight which seedling is which. I have no hope of remembering which numbers are which, but I can remember stories about Deena, Dave and Rudy just fine. This will get more problematic once I run out of unique first names, but I have 445 available and only 219 currently assigned, and if need be I can get creative with spelling, so that's a problem I shouldn't run into for quite a while, if ever.