So, do you remember in the genetics post where I said that if anybody wanted to provide me with an Anthurium 'Midori' so I could pursue my dream of green- and brown-blooming Anthurium seedlings, they should feel free to do so?
An anonymous donor did.
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I'm not sure if the color is right or not. The first set of photos I took came out a lot more yellow than it seemed in real life, but I tried again on a different day and got basically the same thing, so maybe the pea-soup / algae-pond green is how it actually looks, and it's my brain that's getting it wrong.
So far, everybody who's seen it in person (myself, husband, parents and two siblings) has had exactly the same reaction: an initial oh, hey, that's neat followed by a but . . . so that's all it does, though? That's a little weird. I don't know if I like that.
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I still haven't decided whether I like it myself, as a plant to look at and care for. But as a plant to breed, I'm very excited. (Unfortunately, few of the Anthuriums here are shedding pollen at the moment, so I don't expect this bloom to lead to berries. I'm all over the next bloom, though.)
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For anyone who might be interested, I ordered this from Aloha Hawaiian Flowers, which was the only place I could find online that sold whole 'Midori' plants, as opposed to cut flowers. No complaints about the company or the plant; I was a little irritated that the only shipping option I was given was 2-day FedEx, because that was expensive (as 2-day shipping would be for any two points separated by 3900 miles and half an ocean), but on the other hand, I got to choose the day it would arrive, it arrived when they said it would, and there was no damage to the plant from shipping, not even a creased leaf. So the shipping cost was arguably worth it. I did have to repot the plant when it arrived -- it had been potted in what I assume was black lava gravel, which I thought would probably not work as well indoors as it does outdoors in Hawaii. The plant has shown no sign of being traumatized by the shipping or repotting.
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And now, we begin the long wait for pollination, and everything that comes after pollination. Best-case scenario, I'll have a 'Midori' cross blooming in January 2016 or so.
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9 comments:
That's cool!
Texas Anon
Every time I read about a plant delivered via FedEx, I remember the time I tried to send you plants from the FedEx near my old apartment and they told me FedEx doesn't deliver plants and that they couldn't ship it for me.
It's an interesting plant, for sure.
I'm so happy you got your genetic jackpot to play with! I usually like reading for the interesting genetics and trials - not a big fan of Anthuriums myself- but that middle photo is gorgeous! It's so pretty as a whole, very zen with the form. I don't think you get that so much when the spathe is a contrasting color.
It makes me almost want one....how big do they get again?
Hurry up 2016! I want to see what happens!
Sheena:
I'm not actually sure how big they get; the blooms, leaves, and overall plant size tend to be proportional, so it's probably one of the larger varieties, but it's not the biggest one I have. (The biggest would probably be 'Florida.') For the most part, cuttings will root fine in water,[1] so a plant that got too big could be restarted. The cutting will even bloom again fairly soon, ordinarily, but the stumps take a while to come back.
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[1] I have to qualify that with "for the most part," because an accidental cutting of 'Florida' has been sitting in water, refusing to root, for weeks now. I don't know what the hold up is.
Looks like a handsome plant to me!
Maybe you can speed the experiments along by trying to freeze some pollen from it now to use later.
I agree with Sheena that it's much prettier as a whole plant. Has the spadix started changing color? The big photos show that half is whitish and the other half is green--has it turned all white yet?
Anonymous:
I can't remember where I saw it, but I think I did see somewhere that freezing (or maybe just refrigerating) Anthurium pollen is supposed to work. 'Midori' hasn't gotten to the pollen-shedding stage yet, though. I'm not certain that she's going to, either: some cultivars just never shed pollen at all.[1] Even if she's capable of producing pollen, a lot of Anthuriums won't make any if the female flowers get pollinated. I can't tell whether that's happened yet or not.
The Anthurium 'Hookeri' in the plant room has produced a few blooms, and I've thought in the past that maybe I should freeze some of its pollen and use it to pollinate the spathe the next time it blooms. It's not genetically compatible with the other Anthuriums here, so I couldn't do anything but make more of the same thing (and it's probably a hybrid, so I wouldn't even necessarily get the same thing), but it might be interesting to try sometime.
Ginny Burton:
There's still a tiny bit of green at the tip, maybe 5% of the spadix, and the bottom 25ish % has changed to yellow-green, but yeah, it's mostly white now.
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[1] Not just my own observation: the book backs me up on this.
Well, the colour is interesting and disturbing at the same time, at least for me... But on the other hand, the light on first and last photo makes it beautiful (just the words of an amateur photographer...). I guess my last choice of buying a Madagascar jewel (quick inspiration from here ) is just quite boring now... Well, maybe I am too conservative if it comes to indoor plants?! :)
Clairie:
I'm pretty sure the picture that article says is of a Madagascar jewel (Euphorbia leuconeura) is actually a crown of thorns (Euphorbia milii).
(Not entirely their fault; it's mislabeled on the Wikimedia Commons page they got it from.)
They're both perfectly nice plants and there's nothing wrong with buying either one; I'm just telling you so you can determine which one you actually have. And if anybody tries to judge you for buying boring plants, tell them there's no such thing. I mean, everybody's going to have favorites and not-favorites, but I'm pretty sure every plant is somebody's favorite.
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