Schlumbergera seedling no. 089

As a way to change up the whole seedling-naming thing, and liven up what is, let's be real, one more orange/white in a long series of orange/whites, I've exempted 089A from the TinEye process, and instead am going to try to choose from a hodgepodge of emergency names, previously rejected names, names from web pages about the color orange, and wherever else happens to come along. No rules! Anything can happen!

(Anything, that is, except that the seedling will be orange. The seedlings are always orange.)

Also going to skip the pre-screening process, and assess every name I considered, so you can see how that often goes.

089A was apparently not a very heavy bloomer; I only got two photos, of the same flower, and I think there were only two flowers total. One picture turned out fairly well, considering the flower's wonky shape, and the other turned out poorly, so I'm not sure whether this is a good seedling or not.

So what do we have by way of names? Oh my goodness so many names:

• Emergency names -- Apollo, Daylight Factory, Exothermic, Gato del Sol, Molly Ivins, Sly Fox, Sun and Snow
• Previously rejected -- Oompa, She Heard You, Night Cheese, Firewalk, Fervent (or Fervor), Breakin' the Law, Hellkitten, Fornax, Halloween Moon, Bruce Lee, Tamika Flynn, Heatsink, Powerlady, Uh Hey Baby
• Causes that use orange awareness ribbons: Human Rights, Racial Tolerance, Cultural Diversity, Feral Cats, Motorcycle Safety, Underage Drinking, Hunger
• References to orange from around the internet: Persimmon, Benign Warmth, Gut Reaction, Overconfident, Optimistic, Glutton

And okay, let the selection begin.

Well, right off the bat, I regret including the awareness ribbons group, because I feel like if I dismiss any of those names then it means I don't care about the causes they represent. I mean, some of those strike me as more important causes than others, but it's not like I'm all, no, what we need is more feral cats! More drunk middle schoolers!¹ So, yeah, bad judgment on my part, there. Strike the whole category.

And we can't have a Sly Fox and a Gallant Fox both. 'Cause too many foxes . . . uh, spoil the chickens. Or something.²

Glutton is terrible; I don't care if it is historically associated with the color orange. Let's try to stay away from the obviously awful names, yeah? Whoever let that into the list should be fired.

Heatsink doesn't make any more sense than it did the first time. Ditto She Heard You and Uh Hey Baby.

Benign Warmth is somehow both bland and vaguely cloying.

The white is maybe not intense enough for Sun and Snow to work.

Firewalk should be redder.

I don't know what color a Tamika Flynn seedling would be, but it's not orange. This doesn't really feel like the right color for Bruce Lee, either.

Breakin' the Law is kind of ridiculous for this seedling: it's orange and white. How much more normal and law-abiding could it be?

I don't think I like any version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory enough for Oompa, and the Oompa-Loompas are one of my least favorite parts of the movie besides.

Hellkitten and Fervent/Fervor are a little overstated.

Exothermic, Overconfident, Apollo, and Optimistic are all fine, I guess, but I feel like they're not quite interesting enough.

The bloom is perhaps a little delicate for Fornax or Gut Reaction.

Daylight Factory is a specific type of building, with reinforced concrete frames that could accommodate large windows and make use of natural light. See this page for examples and more details. I like the term, partly because it could easily mean a factory that produces daylight, but it doesn't make a lot of sense either way, and most people aren't familiar with the architectural meaning, so ennh.

Powerlady showed up because it is/was the name of a magazine, which makes me uneasy; it also appears to be the name of a chain (?) of gyms, which makes me even more hesitant to use it.

This is a better color for a Molly Ivins than the previous candidate, but I think I'll keep this option in reserve for a higher-quality seedling.

Night Cheese is still funny, and I kind of want to go with this, but the three remaining names are better.

Those three names are: Persimmon, Gato del Sol, and Halloween Moon.

Persimmon is a remarkably good color match, at least going by the photos that come up in an image search. (I'm not sure I've ever seen a persimmon in the flesh.) I'm kind of tempted to go with this name for the color alone. It's also the shortest name.

I'm curious about why a racehorse was named Gato del Sol (Spanish, "cat of the sun" / "sun cat"), but can't find an explanation anywhere. The name amuses me regardless. It's probably more amusing because I can't find an explanation.

Halloween Moon is probably the most evocative image, and color-appropriate, though I'm a little uneasy with it because it would appear to promise blooms on Halloween, from a plant that so far has only ever bloomed in late November. It's also the longest name. I have a "sun" already (111A Morning Sun), which either counts in favor (if I have a sun, there should be a moon) or opposition (enough with the astronomical bodies already). Not sure which.

So we basically have an accurate name, a whimsical name, and a poetic name. Which should it be?

Well. There are a lot of names from this year's batch that aren't in English. I don't care that they're not in English, except insofar as my brain stumbles a little when I'm reading a long column of words from various languages,³ so maybe Gato del Sol is droppable. And of the two remaining, I think I like the poetry of Halloween Moon better than the color fidelity of Persimmon. So I guess this one's Halloween Moon.

The plan for the next seedling, 093A, six days from now, is to let the husband go through the list of candidate names and decide which one will be official. Haven't started doing that yet (as of 14 January), or even asked him, so it may not happen, but that's the plan. I figure y'all could use a little time in someone else's brain.

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¹ I would, however, like to go on record as supporting an increase in the number of drunk feral cats on motorcycles, because that sounds like it would be very exciting.
² I'm sure there must be a folk saying about what happens when you get too many foxes, and I'm sure having too many foxes must be bad. Probably especially for chickens.
³ So far: 034 Wahine (Polynesian, "woman"), 099B Karma Cobra (Sanskrit, though "karma" may be fully adopted into English), 074A Vroom (it's English but "vr" is such an unusual consonant blend for English that it trips me up regardless), 107A Nova Prospekt (potentially Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian, or Serbian: it's deliberately ambiguous in the game I took it from), 079A Yayoi Kusama (Japanese given name), 079B Haleakala (Hawaiian, "house of the sun").
Also 018 Nudibranch is English but may as well not be, given the weird pronunciation and its not being an everyday conversation sort of word.
Last year's list: 019A Belevenissen (German, "experiences"), 030A Diwali (Sanskrit, "festival of lights" or "series of lights"), 035A Patito (Spanish, "duckling")