Pretty picture: Rhyncholaelia digbyana

Not a lot to say about this orchid that hasn't already been covered in one of its previous appearances (mostly the first one): 2010, 2012. I will say this is probably a lot closer to the actual color of the flower than the previous years' attempts have been.

Anthurium no. 0415 "Darby Dragons"

So I totally admit that Darby is not attractive.

The bloom isn't an interesting color. It's super-small. Thrips love it. And as bad as the bloom is, the foliage is even worse:

The whole plant is just kind of garbage. But there's one thing about it that's kind of amazing, which is that it's fast. Like, record-setting, nine-months-ahead-of-schedule fast.

The time from sowing a seed to seeing a first bloom currently averages 26 months, for the plants that have bloomed so far. And that's likely to keep increasing; I've seen one other new bud from a plant sown in 2013,¹ and there have been a few blooms from late 2012, but those don't do much to push the average bloom time lower.² Darby does. Darby is in fact a record, I think: a mere 14 months from sow to first bloom.³

Which is great news, or at least would be if Darby didn't otherwise suck so much. I've decided to wait for a second bloom before deciding what to do with her, and I might try pollinating her on the off chance that she'd have less awful children, but . . . well, don't get too attached to Darby. I probably won't even try to sell her.

-

¹ Specifically 0357 "Rhea Litré," who will be the subject of a later post.
² The blooms with late-2012 sow dates would be 0334 "Jean Poole," 0329 "Gladys Panzarov," 0330 "Faye Quinette," 0346 "Lois Carmen DiNominatre" (bloom still in progress), 0344 "Formica Dinette," 0335 "Donna Fanuday" (bud aborted), and 0597 "Raven" (in progress), who produced their first buds at the ages of 25, 26, 27, 27, 27, 28, and 29 months, respectively.
³ The previous record-holder was 0282 "Dave Trading," at 15 months.
There's also a special case with 0058 "Betty Larsony," who might have started a bud at the age of 12 months, but it was never completely clear whether there was a bud or not, and if there were a bud, it never opened. In an earlier post, I credited one of the early blooms to Betty, but subsequent investigation showed that it most likely belonged to 0059 "Bijoux Tuit" and was misattributed. So Betty probably doesn't count as being faster than Dave.

Anthurium no. 0132 "Eve Stropper"

I hadn't been expecting to like Eve -- I've seen enough pinkish-red blooms by now that they're kind of boring,¹ plus I don't care for spadices that match the spathes, as a rule. But she surprised me.

The first bloom on Eve is surprisingly large, it's stayed more or less flat, and while there have been thrips, they only left a couple marks on the spathe, and mostly appear to have left it alone. She's even started a second bud already.

And the leaves aren't amazing or anything, but they're not bad. So Eve's a keeper. Too bad I don't have room for another 6-inch Anthurium. (Why are Craigslist Iowans not interested in two-foot-tall Coffea arabica seedlings? I have SOOOOOOO MANY.)

-

¹ This mostly refers to 0046 "Aurora Boreanaz," who I have only recently realized photographs inconsistently because there are two different seedlings in the same pot, which I probably would never have figured out had they not both decided to bloom at once. In the other cases where multiple Anthurium seedlings got planted together, either one seedling has taken over the pot and squeezed the other out of existence, or the seedlings are living together comfortably but only one has matured enough to bloom. One of Aurora's plants produces pink-red / pink-purple blooms, and the other produces red / dark-purple blooms:

I could separate them and assign a new number to one of them, I suppose, but since the difference between the two is mainly just that one is lighter than the other, and because separating them would kind of screw up my whole numbering system, I think I'm just going to continue to think of them as both being Aurora. Maybe "Aurora-red" and "Aurora-pink," if I need to differentiate.
Besides both of the "Aurora Boreanaz"es, Eve is most similar to 0108 "Deena Sequins," 0110 "Delta Badhand," and 0116 "Eileen Dover," all four of which I suspect are NOID purple x 'Orange Hot' crosses. Eve's seed parent is 'Gemini,' so it can't be a fifth one of those, but my guess is that it's getting the coloration from 'Orange Hot,' since the NOID purple usually shows up as a purple spadix. Therefore, my guess is 0132 "Eve Stropper" = 'Gemini' x 'Orange Hot.' No way to find out at this point, of course. And it possibly doesn't even matter. But I like trying to figure it out anyway.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Petula's Peacock

Sorry about the lack of a post on Friday; I was working on one, but it wasn't coming together properly, and I didn't have a backup.

Anyway. I'm not crazy about the way this photo turned out, but this is one of the dark Paphiopedilums from this year's show that I was talking about a few posts ago. You'll see a more impressive one in June.

Paphiopedilum Petula's Peacock = Paphiopedilum Ruby Peacock x Paphiopedilum Petula's Mystery (Ref.)