Schlumbergera seedling no. 111

Whoops. I didn't mean to stop posting entirely. Lots of stuff going on, plus I had a big backlog of photos to get through, and the Anthuriums keep doing things so it's hard to keep up. Today, though, we're back to the Schlumbergeras for a minute, because a couple more seedlings have finally bloomed.

These were supposed to be the last of the Schlumbergera blooms until the fall, but now two new seedlings have buds on them (#082 and #091), so it's looking like there will be a steady trickle of new seedlings to be named for a bit longer. Which is okay, I guess, but I'd sort of hoped to be able to focus on the Anthuriums now.

In any case, here's number 111A:¹

Not terribly exciting, and for some reason it didn't photograph all that well (I had to do a lot of fiddling with the color and brightness to get something that looked right), but it's okay, I suppose. Just another orange-and-white.

Possible names for 111A:

Eliminated immediately, mostly just for failing to grab me: Airport Bar, Basswood, Edie and Andy, Fire Academy, Harmony Day, No Sweat, Old Warehouse, One of Twelve, Sunroof, Triumph, and Turbo.

Which left thirteen. Seven could be eliminated for reasons I found convincing:

Ice Tea fails because it implies a browner color than is actually the case, and I felt Deep Dish implied something a lot redder.

Divine Rebellion seemed appealing until I found out that it's a band name, and I don't care for their music. (Struck me as sort of Alice-in-Chainsy, except that I sort of like Alice in Chains and I didn't like what I heard of Divine Rebellion.)

I love the corporate-speak redundancy of Recognition Award (recognition of outstanding whatever is the usual reason for giving an award, but when the award is itself called a "Recognition Award," what is the word "recognition" doing there, exactly?), and I could see it if you're giving someone a trophy for having given other people an outstanding number of trophies. That would be sort of delightfully circular, even. But as far as I can tell from the information given, not only was the honoree being recognized for nothing in particular, but the presenter(s) couldn't even be bothered to pretend that it signified something specific.

Even if that interpretation is completely off, that's the story it evokes in my mind, and I love that story, so I really kind of wanted to name the seedling Recognition Award, but in the end, the vagueness worked against it -- if it means nothing and sounds dumb as the name of an award, it doesn't really mean anything and sounds dumb as the name of a Schlumbergera seedling too.

Similar issues with Scheduled Downtime: I think most of us like the concept, but the corporate-speak makes it unclear whether it's a good thing. Could mean layoffs, or periods when everybody's unable to work because they're putting in the new computer system, or whatever.

She Heard You appeals in a Culture Ship kind of way, but it's not very specific (what did she hear you say? is it good that she heard? is she happy about it? are you happy about it?). Plus I've been trying to stick to two-word names at most.²

Make-Out City also violates the two-word limit, though I kind of liked it anyway until it came time to imagine it as the official name and then I felt like it would seem stupid.

Which brings us to six actual contenders.

Morning Sun references an actual color, which always helps. People tend to like sun in the morning. There's a smallish town in my general area named Morning Sun, which is not itself particularly noteworthy but I've always thought the name was nice.

Cioppino is, apparently, a kind of fish stew. I wasn't familiar with cioppino before and don't have feelings about it (though I tend not to be a fan of stews), but it's a fun word, like 019A "Belevenissen."

Vapour Trail is an abstract but pleasant photo, and there's something odd about the way the bloom is shaped, that has a sort of streaking-through-space feel to it. I mean, all Schlumbergera blooms have that to some extent, but 111A seems to have more of it than usual. So maybe I could imagine it leaving a trail behind it. Also this would be a chance to make it up to all the people who thought 008B "Candor" should have been spelled "Candour," by spelling "Vapor" as "Vapour."

Yammy is at least somewhat accurate as to the color, and the -y suffix says, "hey, so this is kind of like a yam in at least one way, but it's not, like, super like a yam, you know?" Which I think is a lot of attitude to pack into a single letter of the alphabet. And it's short, and therefore easily typed. The down side: makes me think of "yammer," which is unpleasant.

Firewalk has a color that's more or less in the right color neighborhood, I suppose, and it's a memorable enough idea, though I imagine more of a red-orange when I think about firewalks.

Finally, Full Moon seemed appropriate because full moons are often white or orange, the colors of the bloom, and I think people are generally in favor of the Moon, though it's not like I go around asking people how they feel about the Moon a lot or anything. On the other hand, mooning.

So first to go is Yammy, because when I was searching for a dictionary to link to about "yammer," I discovered that yammer is also the name of a social network for businesses.³ Yammy is therefore tainted by association, and is hurled from the list with great enthusiasm.

Also going to drop Cioppino, because not only is it not usually this color, according to an image search, but even when it is, it almost always includes (black) mussel shells. Vapour Trail is also wrong from a color standpoint, as those are always (?) white.

Firewalk is gone because I feel like I already have plenty of fire-related names (057A "Pyrotechnic," 083B "Guy Fawkes Night," 023A "Stoked," 027A "Kiln").

So Morning Sun or Full Moon?

I'm going to go with Morning Sun, on the grounds that the sort of spiky tepals-everywhere look of Schlumbergera flowers is more in line with the way people depict the sun. And there you have it.

Stay tuned for seedling no. 099, tentatively scheduled for Friday.

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¹ (099A will get its own post shortly.)
² And mostly succeeding, though #083B "Guy Fawkes Night" and #084A "Downward-Facing Dog" have three. I can justify the latter on the grounds that the "dogs" aren't worth worrying about either way, since I don't like them or else I wouldn't have named them dogs, and the former is . . . well, let's call it an exception that proves the rule even though exceptions that prove the rule never actually prove the rule because exceptions are exceptions, and at the very least suggest that the rule is incompletely stated, and I really wish people would stop saying this because it makes me crazy.
³ No link, because fuck those guys.