Anthurium no. 0371 "Deb Autry"

So round 1 of the Anthurium seedling purge has ended, and a total of 32 seedlings are gone (plus nine others that just happened to die during the purge period).¹ This is sort of unpleasant, but at the same time, hanging on to a bunch of lazy, non-blooming, long-internoded seedlings had been preventing anything else from happening. No room to expand, no way to promote promising 3- or 4-inch seedlings up to 4- or 6-inch pots, no room for potting up any new seedlings. So I threw out 32 4-inch plants, and initiated a "repotting cascade:" empty space lets me shuffle plants around, which creates room for new plants to move up, which creates more empty space, which means some of the next-smallest size of plants can move up, which produces empty space in a different area, etc.

I haven't actually followed that through to its inevitable end just yet; time has been short, and I seem to have injured a shoulder besides, so keeping everything watered is work enough, but soon, I'll have a new batch of seedlings moving out of the cupcake containers and into pots.

I'd feel bad about the purged seedlings, but the minimum for being a purge candidate was that it had been around for at least three years, without producing any buds (whether or not those buds went to completion or not), and I still kept roughly three out of every four plants I considered throwing away.

(None of this really has anything to do with the seedling du jour, 0371 "Deb Autry," but it's news, and I have to record this sort of thing somewhere.)

Deb is one of a group of seedlings in the mid-300s that produce red or dark red spathes along with green or yellow-green spadices (others include 0357 "Rhea Litré" and 0360 "Heidi Gosique"), all of whom are probably 'Gemini' x NOID red crosses. Deb's spathe is a lighter red than the others, and a little bit smaller than Rhea and Heidi so far, but she's still good.

Most of the group (which I think of as the "social science clique," because that's where their numbers fall in the Dewey Decimal System²) has pretty nice foliage, which also fits the theory that they're 'Gemini' x NOID red; Deb's leaves aren't the clique's best, but they're above average when compared to all seedlings.

Same comment for the plant as a whole -- not the best in the clique, but better than average among the seedlings generally.

So although the competition is continually getting tougher, as more and more seedlings bloom, I don't think Deb has anything to worry about. I'm not necessarily going to up-pot her, but I won't throw her out unless she's irresponsible enough to get root rot or scale or something like that.

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¹ The list of purged plants:
0007 "Coco Peru"
0009 "Dame Edna Everage"
0012 "Heklina"
0030 "Sister Roma"
0034 "Alaska Thunderfuck"[a]
0037 "CoCo Montrese"
0050 "Roxxxy Andrews"
0093 "Claire Leah Goodpick"[b]
0094 "Clara Path"
0098 "Julee Antonellis"
0124 "Fox Saik"[c]
0143 "Gracie Spoon"
0156 "Igor Tulerne"
0179 "Katie Boundary"[d]
0210 "Myra Venge"
0242 "Saffron Sisko"
0250 "Sheila Blige"[e]
0256 "Sue Parduper"
0261 "Tim Berwulf"
0277 "Zach Treplica"[f]
0278 "Hailey Escorpus"
0301 "Serena ChaCha"
0308 "Gladys Bentley"
0348 "Yara Sofia"
0561 "Belinda Chinashop"[g]
0563 "Marian Cousins"
0566 "Bebe Zahara Benet"
0569 "Sherry Vine"
0572 "Autumn Bahn"
0573 "Adore Delano"
0576 "Pearl Harper"
0587 "Susan Sokhsov"
plus the nine that just happened to die, who don't count.
[a] Alaska had bloomed before, but developed root rot. Two suckers survived, but the bloom wasn't special enough to make it worth nursing the suckers along until they hit blooming size. Alaska deserves a more interesting seedling named after her anyway. Maybe the next Alaska Thunderfuck will be better.
[b] Claire had produced a bud like a week prior to the purge, but I didn't remember to look for it when I was throwing plants away, and it didn't jump out at me, and the rest of the plant was crappy-looking. From the pre-purge photo of the bud, we're not missing anything -- it was very pale, which means it would probably have been pink, and it had a bunch of brown spots on it besides, which may or may not have been from thrips.
[c] Fox had attempted to produce a bud once, more than a year ago, but had not shown any inclination to try again, and had weird, misshapen leaves besides.
[d] Katie had bloomed previously (red / yellow, medium size), and I liked her fine, but she went and got scale. As with Alaska, I liked Katie, but she wasn't special enough to try to fix.
[e] Sheila had also attempted to bud, twice, but she dropped the first one before it got anywhere, and the second attempt was so small and light in color that I missed seeing it. She had a very long internodal distance, so I don't feel too bad about throwing her out either.
[f] Zach had started and aborted two buds already, which was frustrating, and they were both pale and scarred-up, like Claire's, which made me think the blooms would have been crap anyway. Also his internodes were really long and the leaves were small and he was just generally crap.
[g] Belinda had a bud briefly in June, but aborted. The bud seemed potentially nice while it was around (red, unblemished), but the rest of her was terrible.
² (specifically 357 to 371: from "mounted forces in warfare" to "schools and their activities / special education")