Sunday, April 26, 2015

Anthurium no. 0357 "Rhea Litré"

Yeah, not only are there two Rheas, there are two Rhea L.s. And both Rheas are pretty nice plants, too, as it happens, though it should be noted that Rhea Litré is less impressive than 0231 "Rhea Listick." If I had known there was a real-life drag queen who performs as "Rhea Litré," I probably would have named 0231 something else, but these things happen.

So but how is the plant, you might be asking. Well, see for yourself:


The bloom isn't anything we haven't seen before, really. Dark red and yellow-green like 0002 "Alexis Mateo," 0290 "RuPaul Charles," 0005 "Chad Michaels," and 0203 "Anna Mae Hemensouz." (Possibly a little more yellow than green in Rhea's case.)

Still, it's fairly nice, compared to most of those: Alexis produces gorgeous leaves but not many blooms, and grows very slowly; RuPaul is still pretty new and may yet surprise us, but the one bloom we've seen so far appeared to have been damaged during development. Until I overwatered a few times, Chad was doing really nicely, and the overwatering didn't actually kill him, but the new growth is coming along very slowly, and I have to be super-careful about watering until he's got a solid root system again. Anna Mae's spathes are pretty small compared to the others, and tend to flip backward pretty severely. So there's still plenty of room for a good dark red / yellow-green, which is why I'm keeping Rhea around.


One thing about all five plants with those bloom colors: they have good foliage. Alexis is the clear winner, with really big leaves, dramatic color, and nifty venation (Not that the photo below shows that necessarily, but trust me: Alexis is superior.), but all five tend to have leaves that are bigger, darker, thicker, and glossier than average. Even more importantly, they tend to be more resistant to thrips damage. (And thank goodness something around here is resistant to thrips damage.) All these characteristics are probably due to the influence of the NOID red, who I suspect of being the pollen parent in all five cases.1

Top: 0002 "Alexis Mateo" and 0005 "Chad Michaels."
Middle: 0203 "Anna Mae Hemensouz."
Bottom: 0290 "RuPaul Charles" and 0357 "Rhea Litré."

Looking forward to seeing a second bloom, because often the second blooms are a better indication of what the plant is really going to do than the first ones are.

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1 0002, 0005, 0203, 0357 have 'Gemini' as the seed parent; 0290's was 'White Gemini.'


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