Kind of a depressing batch today.
Anthurium no. 1722 "Bourgeoisie"
Bourgeoisie doesn't look depressing. The bloom was actually quite nice. Large, more or less free of thrips damage, and a color combination that's a little unusual, at least (especially considering the red/purple seed parent, 0108 Deena Sequins):
Leaves weren't anything to write home about, but they were fine. Not overly damaged by thrips. And the plant budded while still pretty small.
Alas, after many months of not seeing scale in the basement, it came back, and most of the plants on Bourgeoisie's flat had to be discarded. Not a tragic loss, as there are still seedlings around with this color combination, but I'd had high hopes for this one, given the minimal thrips damage and the larger-than-expected inflorescences. So it's at least disappointing.
Anthurium no. 1685 "Betty Bowers"
I dared to hope for something interesting from Betty. Her seed parent was 0031 Sylvester, who isn't ideal (overly prone to the ghost mites, small inflorescences) but has some desirable characteristics (really striking dark red color on the new leaves, leaves are shiny, unusual orange/beige color combination). But she wound up being just another red / yellow.
The shiny-leaf genes, at least, appear to have carried through, but that's about all she's got going for her. The thrips are a problem,
and although I like the overall form of the plant,
there's just not a whole lot there to justify keeping her around.
I mean, I may keep her anyway, because I do that sometimes. But I'm still disappointed.
Anthurium no. 1629 "Jodie Harsh"
Jodie isn't terrible, but the photo is misleading as to color (this was one of the first photos I took with the new camera, when I was trying to figure it out, and so the color settings were off: in reality it's just red),
and the spathe had plenty of thrips damage as soon as it opened. The leaves, strangely, seemed to be thrips-resistant,
so I'm not sure what's up with the spathe. I've noticed that sometimes the thrips seem to go for the leaves and not the spathes, or the spathes and not the leaves, but I don't know whether that's genetic or luck.
In any case, considering that the seed parent was 0276 Zach Religious, which produces gigantic pink spathes and interesting (if occasionally thrips-scarred) foliage, I'd thought Jodie might be better. I mean, I'm willing to wait for a rebloom and see if things improve. But I'm not impressed so far.
Anthurium no. 1314 Lenna Cumberbatch"
Lenna is also already dead; she got too dry last October and couldn't be revived. Sometimes this happens. Not a big loss; the bloom wasn't particularly interesting, and thrips got to the foliage.
Lenna's seed parent was the also-deceased 0279 Tristan Shout, which was a pretty boring pink/pink, so I don't think anything particularly valuable has been lost here.
Anthurium no. 1673 "Bryce Pilaf"
Finally, Bryce, who is at least interesting, if not beautiful.
Bryce's spadix is considerably longer than his spathe, which is something that happens occasionally. This is easier to see in an earlier photo, taken as the spathe was unfurling:
If the later blooms are more normally-proportioned (which sometimes happens when the first bloom looks like this), Bryce might be worth keeping; I like the darker, duller red. Bryce's seed parent, 0330 Faye Quinette, does a similar thing but with orange (in both cases, I think the explanation is that the spathe also contains some chlorophyll, which muddies the otherwise bright red and orange pigments). Not sure how commercially viable brownish-reds and -oranges are, but I like them. So we'll see how that goes. Bryce's foliage doesn't have much to recommend it.
I mean, that's not the worst foliage I've seen lately (The worst would probably be either 0650 Phyllis Deen or 1317 Calpernia Addams.), but it's not good.
I don't have any objection to the overall shape of the plant, though, so if the bloom winds up being nice, I could live with the foliage.
Sorry this post was kind of a bummer; I'm trying to keep approximately to the same order as the seedlings originally bloomed, and sometimes the seedlings are . . . well, kind of a bummer. I'll do something interesting and/or pretty next post.
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2 comments:
Well you can't expect them all to be gems. Look at the bright side -- the ones you get rid of give you more room for other plants which are doing well.
Bourgeoisie does have a nice flower.
Paul:
Well, Bourgeoisie did have a nice flower, yeah.
I hope I'm not giving the impression that I'm especially unhappy about some of the seedlings being duds. I mean, in an ideal world, sure, they'd all be amazing, but the whole point of bothering to post about the seedlings that didn't do anything interesting is that it's data. If there's someone reading these posts who's thinking about doing some plant-breeding themselves, I think it's important to point out that there's a lot of repetition, a lot of seedlings that should be awesome but aren't, a lot of seedlings that never manage to do anything at all, etc.
And you're right, I do pretty desperately need to clear some seedlings out; most of the 3-inch plants are tall enough to burn their leaves on the lights now, and I have a few 4-inch plants I really want to promote to 6-inch but can't because there's no room for more 6-inch plants. I stopped sowing new seeds more than a year ago because there was just no room. If anything, I should be hoping for crappy seedlings.
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