Schlumbergera seedling no. 003

Still trying to get posts written in advance as quickly as I can.¹ I kind of lucked out on 003A, in that a suitable name jumped out at me shortly after the first bloom opened, so I didn't have to spend a lot of time pondering what name to choose. Here was the first bloom:

I kind of figured it would, you know, keep opening, but for whatever reason, it stopped there. A second bloom, later on, did open up normally,

and so have the blooms that followed.

One of the racehorse names that I kept on the emergency names list was Protanto (though it's usually presented as Pro Tanto), a legal term from Latin meaning something along the lines of "as far as it can go," or "as much as one is able," which I gather is typically used when someone is being ordered to pay a debt or fine they're incapable of paying in full: they're ordered to pay pro tanto, to the extent they're able. I have no idea how or why it came to be applied to a racehorse, though since horse racing tends to involve large amounts of money changing hands, and gambling, I can imagine a few stories.

In any case, it seemed like an appropriate name for a flower that sometimes opens all the way and sometimes doesn't. (This has happened a few other times, and the affected seedlings usually wind up opening fully once they've gotten a little practice. 030A Diwali was a notable exception, making multiple half-assed blooms before getting its shit together, but this year, all of Diwali's blooms have been normal.)

I'm guessing 003A Pro Tanto will be making normal blooms from here on, but 28 seedlings into this year's parade of Schlumbergeras, I'm getting desperate for any kind of hook to hang a name on.² This one will do.

-

¹ Among other reasons, the Illowa Orchid Show is coming up on the 19th, and I'd really like to be able to take the day off to go see that, and then spend a few days afterward sorting out the photos and scheduling posts and so forth, without needing to write a bunch of blog posts at the same time. I try to do this every year: sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
² And still 13 seedlings to name after this. At least. Oy.