Thursday, December 4, 2014

Schlumbergera seedling no. 024

When I potted up the seedlings, initially, they were very, very tiny. I hadn't tried potting up Schlumbergera seedlings before, and had no idea whether they'd all transplant fine, or whether I'd see 75% of them die the first week, or what. So, to hedge my bets, I stuck multiple seedlings into the same pot, which has turned out to be overkill, since very, very few of the seedlings ever died.

What this means for seedling no. 024 is that it blooms in two different colors, a nice pinky-peach that TinEye's search says is basically exactly the color of Caucasian infants,1 which plant is the clear winner in that particular pot, and possibly of the flat as a whole. And then there's a dark orange with a white tube, which looks a great deal like number 025 / "Clownfish" but is somehow inferior.

For record-keeping purposes, I'm going with "Safety Vest" for the darker bloom, because, you know, whatever. That's the color it is, it's not the better dark orange so there's no point thinking too much about what to call it.

Schlumbergera "Safety Vest."

Schlumbergera "Safety Vest."

Coming up with a name for the lighter bloom was tough; going strictly off the TinEye results, most of the obvious names wound up being kinda racist in one way or another.2 Fortunately, the page included a photo of Bryce Canyon, in Utah, which was a pretty good color match, so in the interest of recognizing that babies aren't all the same color, seedling 024 will be "Bryce Canyon" / "Safety Vest." I guess. Unless someone can come up with a baby-related name that doesn't sound racist.

This photo and all following: Schlumbergera "Bryce Canyon."




-

1 Or Caucasian skin in general; the search also caught several tattoo photos, shirtless guitarists (with and without tattoos), and women in bikinis (mostly without tattoos).
2 I mean, I'm willing to buy a Schlumbergera 'Exotic Dancer,' sure, but S. 'Caucasian Infant' seems a step too far.


3 comments:

Nic said...

The pale peachy color is beautiful, and it appears to be quite prolific, too!

Claude said...

Uhm... im with you on the caucasian name... how about 'baby doll' or something like thay?

mr_subjunctive said...

Claude:

'Baby Doll,' taken to imply "this is the color baby dolls are," would have the same problems as "flesh-colored" Band-Aids or "nude" panty hose. If named after something else, like a movie, dress style, or song, it could work, but of course we're only thinking about it in the first place because of the color, so.

Though that Laurie Anderson song I linked is probably in my personal 10 favorite songs of all time, and there's another song-related name coming up, so 'Babydoll' would almost be defensible, if not for the fact that the history of the name-decision process is now on the internet so there's really no getting around it coming off as racist regardless.

It should perhaps be noted that the color is an extremely good match for Bryce Canyon, too, at least the photo I found originally. (Here is a different photo, which may or may not be the original photo but is in any case close enough to the bloom color that you can probably see the similarity.)