At long last. . . .
Most Floriferous is a straightforward category: either the plant produces lots of flowers or it doesn't. Not a lot of ambiguity to it. Granted, I don't count them, so it's possible the seedling that produced the most flowers has never actually won, but in principle there's objectivity. In any case, this year it was pretty easy to guess without counting -- Freyja's Turkey was very dramatic and impressive.
I'm a little unsure about Pat Benatar -- there's no question that it bloomed a lot, but I remember the number of blooms in the 2018-19 season much better than I remember the number of blooms from the 2017-18 season. Really only the 2017-18 season should count. So maybe it doesn't deserve the nomination, but whatever, it's not like it won.
196A Fred Rogers did all its blooming in the basement, and the flowers were all a very nice orange/white. I've had orange/white seedlings in the basement reveal themselves to be orange/pink seedlings when they were moved to the plant room (specifically 025A Clownfish and 200A Breakin' The Law; I can't remember whether there were others), so I'm trying not to get attached to the coloration here, but Fred Rogers produced a lot of flowers, at unusual times of the year, and the flowers generally looked pretty nice, so it wins.
Though it should be noted that both 177A Ham And Cheese and 197A Here If You Need Me produced more blooms this year in the plant room than 196A Fred Rogers ever dreamed of in the basement.
141A Soujourner Truth produced a lot of big, fluffy-looking flowers while still in the basement.
160A Composition In Red & Pink wasn't hugely impressive last year, but in October/November 2018, it produced a lot of blooms, which were pleasingly-colored.
188A Freyja's Turkey was just a monster, though -- lots of blooms, a really nice color combination. It possibly outdoes both 083A Psychedelic Bunny and 067A Cyndi Lauper, which were the previous best magenta/red/orange/white seedlings. So it wins.
420A Franceska Mann might have had a shot at this award had it produced more flowers. Maybe it can snag a Most Improved award next year.
This category becomes more difficult every year. Three of these five nominees probably shouldn't qualify, because they're not really new colors. I'm letting them in anyway because: 044A Iktsuarpok has a much stronger pink-magenta center than the other white / pink seedlings, so it's kind of new. 047A Pluto is a little pinker or paler than previous peach / white blooms. 141A Sojourner Truth has a lot more white in the petals, more consistently, than any of the earlier magenta / whites. So they're all kinda new, or at least more distinct from previous color combinations than all the other not-new ones.
But this award was always going to go to either 377A Butterchange My Stranger or 392A Subjunctive, those being the only actual new color combinations, and although they're both very pretty, and Subjunctive is very striking, I think I like Butterchange My Stranger just a tiny bit more, because the light yellow and light pink balance one another a bit better.
It may interest the reader to know that there's already been a new color combination in the 2018-19 season, on seedling 341A, though I haven't posted the photo to the gallery yet, so you'll have to wait and see what it is. I can tell you, though, that I wouldn't have imagined that this coloration was possible from the seed parent (088A Cyborg Unicorn, which is orange / magenta).
I like this category, less because it celebrates my cleverness at seedling-naming1 than because the other awards typically show the same few seedlings over and over again, and this is a chance to look at some of the ones I haven't mentioned yet.
Iktsuarpok is certainly the best word I've learned in the last year or so. It's hard to throw into a conversation casually, of course, because nobody knows what it means, and I'm also not sure I'm pronouncing it correctly. But I like having a word for the experience.
I can't imagine ever needing to talk about the situation described by Tickly-Benders; as far as I know, it's not really a thing that happens anymore. At least it doesn't happen around here. But I enjoyed learning about that, too.
I'm giving the award to Can't Find The World, partly because I think it's a nice (if kind of baffling) name, and partly to draw attention to the fact that the seedling has gotten its shit together since it was named, and has been producing very nice blooms in the 2018-19 season so far. It's another early contender for Most Improved next year.
Not much of a contest, really. I would have liked to give this to either 377A Butterchange My Stranger or 392A Subjunctive, but neither of them produced many flowers, and I'm not confident that Subjunctive is going to have any yellow in it when it reblooms.
Should anyone be curious,2 the record for the number of Schlummies nominations by a single seedling is five, held by three seedlings:
(2015-16) Best New Non-Orange (won)
(2015-16) Best Overall New Seedling (won)
(2015-16) Most Floriferous (won)
(2016-17) Best Overall Returning (lost to 067A Cyndi Lauper)
(2017-18) Best Overall Returning (won)
(2015-16) Best New Name (lost to 066B Sigrid The Haughty)
(2015-16) Best New Non-Orange (lost to 079A Yayoi Kusama)
(2016-17) Best Overall Returning (lost to 067A Cyndi Lauper)
(2017-18) Best Overall Returning (lost to 079A Yayoi Kusama)
(2017-18) Most Improved (lost to 067A Cyndi Lauper)
(2016-17) Best New Color Combination (lost to 132A Pointy Space Princess)
(2016-17) Best New Name (lost to 127A Cooperating Banjos)
(2016-17) Best New Non-Orange (won)
(2016-17) Best Overall New Seedling (won)
(2016-17) Most Floriferous (lost to 096A I'm Really Sorry)
And obviously Yayoi Kusama has the record for number of wins, with four.
Probably some Anthurium posts next: I need to think about something other than Schlumbergeras for a while. For example, cookies.
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4 comments:
Okay, the cookies were definitely chuckle worthy ... though only other plant addicts are likely to fully appreciate them or even realize what they are. ;-)
Freyja's Turkey is maybe the most beautiful flower I've ever seen! Let me know when you start selling it. I'm giving Candor and Stoked to a nice young man at FedEx who wants to have a house plant. Stoked is covered with buds and Candor has a few. I've enjoyed them for several years and am glad to pass them on to a new enthusiast.
I meant to ask about the cookies. Did you bake them? Seems unlikely since you've said you don't cook. Did some fan make them for you? They're charming.
Virginia Burton:
I baked them! My mother had made "leaf" cookies for the Canna Festival in October, and it reminded me that I occasionally think about asking her for recipes, so I did, and she did, and there you go.
I also tried using different flavors in different frosting colors, with more mixed results. The purple ones (cloves) went well, and the orange (natural organic orange flavoring) were surprisingly palatable. White was vanilla, though the frosting recipe has vanilla in it by default so technically they were all vanilla, and then I tried artificial flavors for the red (cherry, mostly benzaldehyde) and green (banana, mostly isopentyl acetate). Red and green didn't really work; I was too sparing with the flavoring and they didn't taste that different from the white.
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