Anthurium no. 1594 "Roxy-Cotten Candy"

Before you ask: yes, that's how it's spelled. I checked. (This is actually pretty smart, because although search engines will try to correct the spelling, if you say no, you stupid search engine, I typed it that way on purpose how dare you question me, almost all the results delivered are actually for the drag queen. Imagine coming up with a way to get a search engine to deliver relevant results! In 2017, no less!)

It took me a while to explain the name. I mean, I had a guess just from reading it, but confirming took more time.

First I came up with a Yahoo! Answers (that is, Yahoo! "Answers;" it's pretty clear Yahoo!'s never attempted any kind of quality control¹) page in which I learned that there are some people out there who believe the drug is called "oxy cotton" and/or "roxy cotton."^{2, 3} The source of "oxy cotton" specifically might be a song by Lil Wyte, called "Oxy Cotton," which from the lyrics seems to be basically just "Hello, my name is Lil Wyte, and I enjoy abusing and selling drugs; here is an exhaustive list of the drugs I specifically enjoy consuming, and the forms and quantities in which I prefer to consume them."

Not really fair to blame rappers for the opiate crisis, but . . . I feel like some of them could probably be more involved in finding a solution for it.

So. Yeah. That's kinda depressing. When I posted about Kandy Ho the other day,⁴ I wasn't thinking about this post being up next, or the likely meanings of "Roxy-Cotten," so I feel like I should reassure you that the next few names in the lineup are way less tragic and depressing.⁵

What does Roxy do, personally? Drag queen shit, it looks like. Basically what you'd expect. There's a Twitter account,⁶ Instagram, Facebook,⁷ YouTube channel, blah blah blah. (The weary sighing here is not because any of these things are particularly bad, or because Roxy does them especially poorly; I'm just tired of doing a search for a queen and having everything that comes up being social media accounts. "I'm so happy to be at @place doing #thing with @othertwitteraccount #loveya #sohappy." It looks like connection with other people, and very rarely it might actually be connection with other people, but mostly social media is like when you go into an animal shelter and all the dogs start barking at you, and all the barks reverberate off the walls and floor to the point where there's just this cacophony of barks blending into one another to the point where you can't tell one dog's bark from another. What I always hope to find is an interview where the queen talks about what they do and why they do it and what other things they like and what they think drag is and other things they're thinking about and so forth, but four out of five times, it's "@place is the best! Come meet me at @otherplace tomorrow between 2-5 PM! #iwouldliterallysurrendereverythingthatmakesmeagenuineanduniquehumanbeingtohavemyexistencevalidatedbytheenvyofalargenumberofotherhumans.")

That's harsh. I probably don't mean that. It's been a long week, what with the prostitution and drug use and Ric Ocasek and what have you. Let's move on to the seedling.

So Roxy's first bud had me kind of excited, because it was an odd color. The seed parent, 0330 Faye Quinette, was notable for having flower buds that were sort of a rich, woody brown, which I hadn't seen before. When the spathe actually opened and turned out to be orange inside instead of brown, I was disappointed. I mean, I eventually got used to Faye, and I like her now, but at the time it was a lot more ordinary than I hoped for. Roxy's first bud was an even darker brown than Faye's had been, and unlike Faye also had fairly pronounced blackish veining:

And I was thinking, okay, well, it's probably still orange on the inside, but a dark orange with black veins would still be pretty cool, right? So I was kind of cautiously excited, because I learned nothing from Faye. So then the spathe opened and it was just . . . red.

A dark red, sure. Maybe a little orangey-brown in the red somewhere. Not boring. But nowhere near as cool as the inflorescence I'd imagined, so I was disappointed. The second bloom had less thrips damage and was a little bit more together just in general, with more interesting coloration on the spadix.

And it's worth noting that the foliage is also pretty interesting; I don't know if it's actually genetically inclined to make long, narrow, asymmetrical foliage, but it's done it at least once:

So that's kind of interesting too. And even with red spathe "fronts," the "backs" remain brownish, and retain the contrasting veining, so I'm pleased about that.

And it's now bloomed twice while in a 3-inch pot, so it has enthusiasm in its favor.

The upshot: Roxy gets to stay and be promoted the next time I have a chance to move some plants up to 4-inch pots, 'cause it's weird, and weird is good. We could probably use more weird.

Two other seedlings from the same seedling group have bloomed so far (1589 Anita Waistline and 1592 Maliena B Itchcock), and a couple other seedlings of 0330 Faye Quinette have bloomed too (1634 Helena Handbag and 1679 Madison Adjective); Roxy's probably the most unusual and interesting of the five.

The next seedling's not that big of a deal, but you haven't seen anything like 1419 Maya Douglas and 1103 Valeria T. before. (At least not here.) Valeria's even actually pretty. So hang in there. I'll try not to remind you of social ills, shame you for using social media, or ruin your enjoyment of any 1980s comedians for, like, at least a week.

-

¹ Just to underline the point, one of the responses on the linked page, a question about whether there are any dangers of snorting pills, which was apparently posted by a parent who recently discovered that their son had been snorting "pills" (presumably prescription medication?) for two years, was basically he could get a sinus infection; sounds like he wants some attention.
Which, I mean, no shit he wants attention -- it took his parent two years to notice that he had a drug problem. But sinus infections aren't really the headline here: crushing and snorting opiates is a really good way to overdose on them, because they're absorbed faster. Something that none of the answers at Yahoo! even mentions as a possible danger of snorting oxy. Don't get your health care advice from Yahoo! Answers. (As if the name "Yahoo! Answers" wasn't enough of a tip-off.)
² Also homophones continue to be the bane of my existence, or at least one of the banes. I have a lot of banes. Should probably dial back on the banes.
Oxycontin -- notice, oxycoNtin -- is not even remotely the same as "heroine." A heroine is a female hero or protagonist; for the drug you want heroin, no "e" at the end.
It's possible that we can hold Lorde partly responsible for this, though I'm sure people were confused about whether or not to add the "e" before 2013 so it's not all her fault.
Oxycontin (generic name oxycodone) is in fact quite a bit like the no-"e" heroin. Unfortunately.
³ There is a brand name for an oxycodone/paracetamol combination, "Roxicet," which is probably where the "roxy" part comes from.
⁴ Did you watch the video in the Kandy Ho post? Go watch the video in the Kandy Ho post.
⁵ 0886 Zaria Baudit, 1419 Maya Douglas, 1103 Valeria T., 1634 Helena Handbag, 0645 Mabel Syrup, 1721 Leonid the Magnificent. See? Not sad and horrible at all.
⁶ The description for which brags, "Once called the Gallagher of Drag."
Oof. Honey, that was not a compliment. You don't want to be the Gallagher of anything.
⁷ Left unlinked on purpose because fuck Facebook.