Anthurium no. 1679 "Madison Adjective"

I've recently been reminded that "Madison," as a girl's name, was more or less invented by the 1984 film Splash. (Daryl Hannah's character chooses the name by looking at a street sign -- Madison Avenue. At the time, nobody named their girls Madison, which the film lampshades ("Madison? That's not a name!"), but by 2001 everybody named their girls Madison so that joke didn't really work anymore.¹

That's only slightly related to our seedling of the day, but it's still interesting.²

This is another case where my old camera and new camera have different takes on the bloom color; the old camera thought the spathe was a pretty straightforward orange,

whereas the new one puts a little pink into it.

In person, my eye agrees with one camera some of the time and the other camera the rest of the time, so I honestly can't tell you what color this seedling is.

The seed parent is 0330 Faye Quinette; Faye's seedlings are often kind of in-between colors like this. (In particular, 1666 Horrorchata, from the same seedling group,³ is on the continuum between orange and pink as well, though Horrorchata leans more to the pink end, while Madison favors orange.)

The foliage is just okay; there has been some thrips damage. (Not a lot, but enough to be obnoxious.)

I expect to keep the seedling, if for no other reason than to hang on to as many of the genes from 0330 Faye Quinette as possible. Though if the thrips get a lot worse, I may have to reconsider. (No sign of that so far.)

Madison's not so interesting that she should have gotten a post to herself, but I also wanted to recommend a houseplant-specific podcast I've recently encountered, Jane Perrone's On The Ledge, and I didn't want the recommendation to be buried under a bunch of Anthurium photos.

Perrone is in the UK, so sometimes the concerns are a little UK-specific (like, I have no idea why getting a variegated Monstera deliciosa is a big deal, but it comes up a lot⁴), but that sometimes makes it more interesting. And in any case, if you're interested in houseplants, it's probably worth your time to look through the archives and try an episode. If you need a recommendation, I particularly liked Episode 44, because a lot of interesting historical details get dropped in along the way.

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¹ Technically, in 2001, everybody named their girls Emily. But Madison was the second most popular girl's name.
² (Yes it is.)
³ (FE, which also produced 1634 Helena Handbag)
⁴ (As do claims about how ridiculously easy Aspidistra is to grow. I discarded four Aspidistras between 2007 and 2013 before giving up on the genus, so this always makes me grit my teeth a little bit.)

Anthurium nos. 1336, 1714, 0963, 1219, and 1508

The main hangup for posting has been that I didn't have photos ready for the various seedlings that needed posts; I caught up on that a few days ago. (Getting names chosen for the Schlumbergera seedlings is also an obstacle, but at least I can do Anthuriums.)

So I now have 62 unblogged Anthurium seedlings, and 48 Schlumbergera seedlings. If I were to do one post per day, with one seedling per post, then I won't manage to catch up until the middle of November, and by mid-November more of both kinds of seedlings will have bloomed.¹ I don't think I can do more than one post per day (one post per day is already pretty unlikely), so the obvious thing to try is to do more than one seedling per post. So here we are.

So my plan is to lump some of the less-interesting Anthurium seedlings together in bundles of five, and get them out of the way that way, and hopefully that will free up enough time for me to find names for the Schlumbergeras. (Interesting Anthurium seedlings -- and yes, there are some -- will still get individual posts.)

Anthurium no. 1336 "Erica Rae O'Hara"

Erica Rae isn't bad, just nothing we haven't seen before. The inflorescence is a good size, and the spadix is maybe slightly interesting -- don't see brown spadices very often --

-- and the foliage is actually pretty nice. Very shiny, more thrips-resistant than average,

and the plant has a nice form overall.

The new leaves are even kind of ornamental on their own.

So I'll keep her.


Anthurium no. 1714 "Augusta Wynndt"

Similar story with Augusta: blooms are a good size and look nice,

though the two cameras don't agree on what color the spathe is, and I don't remember what it looked like well enough in person to be able to tell you which is the real color. Old camera:

New camera:

Leaves are again nice and mostly unbothered by thrips, though the texture is different from Erica Rae's:

And the overall form is pleasant.

Also a keeper.


Anthurium no. 0963 "Cassandro"

It's possible that Cassandro will do something prettier in the future, or would if given a bigger pot in which to grow, but I'm not impressed so far.

Even if subsequent blooms were bigger and less damaged, he's not doing anything we haven't seen before, and the plant overall is pretty weak-looking.

I suppose the narrowness of the leaves is maybe mildly interesting.

But overall, no compelling reason to keep Cassandro.


Anthurium no. 1219 "Niles Marsh"

Niles has a slightly unusual color.

I mean, we've seen pale pinks before, but not very often, and Niles has produced quite a few blooms since he got started, which is a point in his favor.

Unfortunately, light pink is a really terrible color for thrips damage -- I still haven't determined whether the thrips are more attracted to lighter spathes, but thrips damage definitely shows up a lot better on light-colored blooms. Which dampens my enthusiasm a bit. The leaves are nevertheless pretty nice,

and it hasn't seemed overly bothered by the thrips otherwise. I'm a little concerned about the growth habit -- that stem looks kind of long, for a plant with such a small number of leaves --

but we can probably keep Niles around and see how things go. The spathe color is enough justification to keep the seedling, as long as the thrips don't get too extreme.


Anthurium no. 1508 "Tabbi Katt"

And finally, the very misleadingly-named Tabbi Katt (the name of a real drag queen), which has decent blooms in a boring color,

though the thrips seem to be more of a problem on Tabbi than on the other seedlings from this post. That notch on the left side of the spathe shouldn't be there. The thrips don't seem to be a problem on the foliage, though, which is nice,

And the plant is otherwise pleasant.

So Tabbi's also a wait-and-see kind of seedling, but I like her chances a lot better than Cassandro's. Not a bad group of seedlings overall, just less interesting than I would like.

Next post on Saturday.

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¹ Indeed, the 2017-18 Schlumbergera season hasn't even ended yet. Ordinarily, the blooming is basically over by the end of April, but this year I've had seedlings bloom for the first time in May (470A, 426A, 376A), June (183A), and July (473A, 434A, 421A, 123A). Which shouldn't be happening; my guess is that the air conditioning, plus the downstairs lights being on timers, has convinced some of the seedlings in the basement that it's November year-round. For the sake of being able to do a Schlummies post for the 2017-18 season, I'm going to arbitrarily set the cutoff at 1 September: anything that blooms after that will officially belong to 2018-19.