So it's March 24, and I'm approximately hip-deep in orchid photos and post preparation. As a result, I don't have as much time to sing Beth's praises as she deserves, but aside from one thing, she's pretty nice:
By now, there's nothing particularly special about this color combination -- Beth is awfully similar to 0144 Graham Reaper, the late 0213 Nadya Falt, and 0423 Georgeanne D'Dragon, among others -- but it's uncommon enough. (I think I mostly like it because none of the founding varieties have this coloration.)
The one problem with Beth is scale. She doesn't have a massive infestation going on, and I'm optimistic, but she stayed clean so long that I'd thought maybe she was resistant, so it was a bummer to see the spots of honeydew.1 We'll see.
The leaves are nice and large, relatively unbothered by thrips:
And the plant as a whole is big, befitting a plant as old as Beth is (coming up on 4 1/2 years2).
So she's a keeper, if the scale problem can be solved. Which is a mighty big "if," obviously, but there you go.
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1 Insane though it is, when I water the 4-inch Anthurium seedlings, I inspect them individually for scale infestation at the same time. Not literally every leaf, front and back, but a representative sampling. I'm thorough enough that I usually see spots of honeydew, rather than actual insects, but not so thorough that I don't see a mature insect from time to time. I don't want to spend my entire life squinting at leaves, after all.
3-inch plants get inspected periodically, when I have enough spaces open in the 4-inch flats that I can think about promotions, but that only happens every couple months or so because there are so many of them.
6-inch and 8-inch plants (oh yeah, 0334 Jean Poole recently became the first seedling to move into an 8-inch pot, because she was enormous) mostly just get glanced at from time to time. I figure by the time they're in a 6-inch pot, they've been around long enough that if they were going to develop a scale problem, they'd have done so already. This faith is, er, mostly supported by observation. Some of the more recent promotees have brought scale with them from 4-inch pot to 6-inch pot; I'm particularly worried about 0091 Bob Sharunkle (who has also been accidentally decapitated) and 0408 Tex Messich.
2 (holy crap!)
3-inch plants get inspected periodically, when I have enough spaces open in the 4-inch flats that I can think about promotions, but that only happens every couple months or so because there are so many of them.
6-inch and 8-inch plants (oh yeah, 0334 Jean Poole recently became the first seedling to move into an 8-inch pot, because she was enormous) mostly just get glanced at from time to time. I figure by the time they're in a 6-inch pot, they've been around long enough that if they were going to develop a scale problem, they'd have done so already. This faith is, er, mostly supported by observation. Some of the more recent promotees have brought scale with them from 4-inch pot to 6-inch pot; I'm particularly worried about 0091 Bob Sharunkle (who has also been accidentally decapitated) and 0408 Tex Messich.
2 (holy crap!)
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