Monday, December 8, 2014

Schlumbergera seedling no. 026

Going with "Brick Wall" for this one, mostly because it was one of the first seedlings to bloom. There are a surprisingly huge number of photos of brick walls on the TinEye search (Brick walls are apparently highly compelling photographic subjects. I didn't know.), and they've come up in lots of the color searches; no. 26 just happened to claim the name first.


Despite the sort of boring / hostile name, the photographs turned out well, I thought.


5 comments:

Jean Campbell said...

Beautiful. I would have called it a 'Thanksgiving Cactus' and named it Pumpkin Pie. It looks good enough to eat.

Ginny Burton said...

I was about to try to adjust the colors on my monitor when I read Jean Campbell's comment. Apparently she and I see the color as orange rather than brick. Here in Northern Virginia there is brick everywhere, but none that looks like your flower.

I guess it could be the color of adobe bricks.

mr_subjunctive said...

Jean Campbell:

There's a pumpkin-related one later.

Ginny Burton:

It's not you; some of the problem is Instagram-style filters. (Some of the problem is also that there's a wider range of brick colors than you might think, but even if they were absolutely uniform the world over, filters would give us a range of colors anyway.)

Some of it's also that color perception is more context-dependent than we expect. Mom didn't think that 'Bryce Canyon' looked remotely close to baby-colored until I cropped out a small bit of the picture and zoomed in on it, and then she was like, oh, now I see it.

Unknown said...

-You've probably seen this, but just in case, re. colour context dependence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion

-Love the Brick Wall. I also love your endless supply of punny variety names.

-Do you have any tips/tricks for germinating Schlumbergera seeds? I have two fruits that just set. If I understand your previous posts, cleaning the seeds then drying them for a day, then planting in vermiculite and keeping them enclosed and warm worked best for you. Is that more-or-less right?

-Your blog is great.

mr_subjunctive said...

Dan:

Yeah, that's the basic process. No real tricks to it beyond that; the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that once they've germinated, they don't do a whole lot in the vermiculite. The last batch I sowed on February 23, and transplanted on November 25, but they were probably ready to transplant in July or August.

Unlike some plants, they don't have much of a staggered germination. Spathiphyllums will drag germination out over a year if you let them, with a few sprouting every few weeks, for example, but it seems like Schlumbergera pretty much all come up at once, maybe within about 8 weeks.

Also don't be afraid of throwing some of them out. Even if the germination rate isn't great (I think I get about 60-70%), there will be so many seedlings.