Schlumbergera seedling no. 022

I'm calling no. 022 "Sad Tomato," since a few tomato pictures came up in the TinEye results, and "Crush With Eyeliner"¹ is an okay REM song. As seedlings go, it's one of the better ones. A lot redder than the other oranges, a lot oranger than the other reds.

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¹ (which includes the line "she's a sad tomato" a couple times)

Schlumbergera seedling no. 008

Neither the flower color nor the flower shape has been as variable as I had been hoping for,¹ and when shape deviates from the norm, it tends to be unpleasant. Behold Schlumbergera "Frightened Dog."

The name, obviously, derives from the excessively reflexed petals, which look to me like a dog with its ears flattened against its head.

The color is nice, I guess, but I don't really see any reason to keep "Frightened Dog" around just for that when I've got "Clownfish" and "Safety Vest."

They can't all be gems, you know.

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¹ Though I'm probably being unreasonable when it comes to color: the odds are high that most of these are siblings from a 'Caribbean Dancer' x NOID salmon/peach cross.

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."

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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.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 057

In the interest of coming up with more memorable names for the seedlings than just "number 25," "number 57," etc., I've been using the TinEye Multicolr[sic] Search Lab to look for things of the same color(s) to name them after.

In this particular case, the petals are (at least to a first approximation) #db665e, and the "tube" (there's got to be a better term for that) #f4dedb, which when paired with a sort of random amount of black (#000000) yielded multiple photos of fireworks, including a couple images from pyrotechnic displays at concerts. So seedling no. 57 is dubbed "Pyrotechnic."

Which is perhaps an exaggeration. But who'd want to live in a world where plants have to be named accurately?

Schlumbergera seedling no. 025

#025 ("Clownfish") is still my favorite Schlumbergera seedling, I think. One other one, #054, is competitive, maybe, and there's another (#024) that is all but identical to #025, but Clownfish will always have a special place in my heart. Pretty free-blooming (though there have never been a lot of blooms at once, it's at least been producing them over a long period of time), not overly sensitive to day length, and the color is consistently a strong, dark orange that all but glows in the plant room. Plus you get a lot of points with me for blooming earlier than I expect you to.

Pretty picture: Angraecum sesquipedale

This improves on last year's A. sesquipedale photo by having been taken inside the enclosure, as opposed to being taken from six feet away.

That still doesn't make it impressive-looking. But we're getting closer. Literally.

previously: 2013