Anthurium no. 0058 "Betty Larsony"

Betty, Betty, Betty. She was the very first seedling to produce a flower bud, and is still the youngest seedling (14 months) ever to produce a flower bud. And then it took her two and a half years, maybe (?), to produce a flower bud that actually developed and opened. So that's, uh, pretty weird.

Some of the problem is that I had to cut the top off the plant; I don't remember when that was, or why, but that's a pretty substantial setback, and it's not like Anthuriums grow that quickly in the first place. But even then: the first bud never opened, and at least one bud last year (around January 2014) aborted before opening as well. Somewhere in between those two dropped buds, I cut the top off the plant and it grew back from the stump.¹

Two posts from 2014 claim to have photos of a flower from Betty; I decided later that this one was a case of mistaken identity,² and I'm unsure whether the second shows her or not (with 0035 "Alyssa Edwards"), but it strikes me as at least somewhat more likely.

So it's possible that it only took a year to re-bud. Even if that's the case, though, I only got one bloom, and then she was done trying for another year and a half. Two whole blooms in two and a half years is pretty weak. By way of comparison, consider: 0112 "Dottie A. Rebel" produced her first bud in late March 2015, i.e., not quite five months ago, and has already produced at least three blooms (maybe four), plus two unopened buds besides.

I could maybe forgive slow blooming if Betty had anything else going for her, but she's pretty disappointing. (Persistent, granted. But disappointing.) The blooms are average size, in the second most common color.³ They're in the middle of the pack as far as thrips damage, too -- not the worst I've seen, but thrips have definitely visited.

Both the best thing and the worst thing I can think of to say about the foliage is that it is completely adequate: thrips don't bother it much, but it's not an interesting color, size, or texture.

I mean, considering the beheading and all, I think Betty's doing fine, but she's not a keeper. The best thing she had going for her was the early blooming, and it turns out that she can't even do that well enough to be worth keeping.

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¹ Anthuriums will usually resprout when cut back, though they fail to do so just often enough that I hesitate to do it unless I really have no other options.
² I hadn't really developed my system for identifying which plants were in which pictures yet, and I think I either relied on my memory and got it mixed up that way, or I got momentarily confused between 0058 and 0059, wrote down the wrong one, and then perpetuated the error with the blog post.
³ I don't mind red/yellow. Anything's better than pink/pink. But I've seen a lot of red/yellows already:

Top row, L-R: 0026 "Peaches Christ," 0034 "Alaska Thunderfuck," 0059 "Bijoux Tuit," 0063 "Audrey Quest"
Second row: 0076 "Bob Humbug," 0088 "Charlotte F. Babylon," 0125 "Anya Wei," 0179 "Katie Boundary"
Third row: 0223 "Patty Cake," 0238 "Rudy Day," 0243 "Sal Monella," 0245 "Sawyer Ad,"
Bottom row: 0257 "Summer Bederth-Enuthers," 0264 "Trey Lerpark," 0280 "Jujubee," 0282 "Dave Trading"
And that's not even all of them.