Pretty picture: Dendrobium parthenium

This one is at least kind of novel.

The camera had trouble with it (mostly-white flowers on a mostly-white background), but you can maybe kind of get the general idea anyway. It was tagged as Dendrobium sanderianum, but D. parthenium is, or at least was for a brief period last March, the correct name. Most of the photos that come up on-line for the species show a prominent purple throat on the flower (e.g.), as opposed to the greenish-yellow with a few thin reddish-purple lines here; a substantial minority are pretty uniformly white (e.g.).

The streaky leaves were interesting in person; I don't think they're actually supposed to look like that, based on the photos I found in image searches, but I don't know what would cause the streaks.

As far as I'm aware, Den. parthenium isn't related to any of the previous orchids I've posted about on PATSP, but it wouldn't necessarily surprise me if it were. I haven't always bothered to go into orchid genealogies at all, and I've only rarely followed the trail all the way back to the original species, so I wouldn't be surprised to find some Den. parthenium connection in the previous orchids if I were to look hard enough. All I know for sure is that there doesn't seem to be a connection to any of the Dendrobiums I did bother to investigate.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Spring Bird

I have disliked orchids before, for various reasons. Sometimes the flowers are fine but just didn't photograph well; sometimes they don't do anything for me personally, but I can see why they might appeal to other people, so I just chalk it up to "not my thing" and move on. With this one, though, for reasons which aren't entirely clear to me, I just hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

In this particular case, it didn't photograph especially well either, but I looked at other pictures of the same grex elsewhere on the internet and concluded that the photos were more or less accurate. It really is kind of a muddy and washed-out light orangey pinky yellow. *shrug*

I couldn't find photos of either parent on-line, though I'd be willing to bet that both are prettier than this.

Dendrobium Spring Bird = Dendrobium Demitasse x Dendrobium Sweet Love (Ref.)

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Andree Millar

Well. We made it through the RNC with no deaths. Not even any assaults, as far as I'm aware. This should be normal, of course, but I wouldn't have bet on it, so congratulations to the city of Cleveland and their police.¹

Only 105.5 days left until the election.²

I'm thinking about ending the orchid-only posting after this week, but no promises; I'm enjoying the break from blogging a lot more than I expected to (I even have time to work out again!). And I still have the problem that nothing new is happening with the plants: lots of new Anthurium blooms (and one very late Schlumbergera), just like it was before the break. We'll see.

Meanwhile, there is an orchid to consider.

I'm unhappy with the photos I got. I don't remember it being nearly this intense of a yellow in person, and the blooms have a sort of . . . hunched-over? look to them that I'm not particularly into, where the tepals bend over to cover the lip. The number of blooms is impressive, I guess, but I'm actually more interested in the foliage, particularly how broad the leaves are. I haven't seen a lot of Dendrobiums with leaves like this.

The patterning on the flowers' labellums (labella?) is interesting, too; I wish it had photographed better.

I couldn't confirm this one at the International Orchid Registry site, but I don't know why. I did find it elsewhere on the net, so I assume it exists, but it's weird for something not to be in the IOR database. The photos I found elsewhere on-line don't match my pictures very closely -- in particular, a lot of them have purple lips, rather than brown, as my photos show. The closest match I found was at davesgarden.com.

• http://wifemothergardener.blogspot.com/2013/01/dendrobium-andree-millar.html
• http://www.rv-orchidworks.com/orchidtalk/cattleyas-vandas-dendrobiums-bloom/38834-dendrobium-andree-millar.html
• http://www.rv-orchidworks.com/orchidtalk/cattleyas-vandas-dendrobiums-bloom/34804-dendrobium-andree-millar-atroviolaceum-x-convolutum.html

The few places that had ancestry for Dendrobium Andree Millar have it as:

Dendrobium Andree Millar = Dendrobium atroviolaceum x Dendrobium convolutum

and I suppose I'm prepared to believe that that's the truth.

This is the first time I've seen this particular plant at the orchid show, but there have been some relatives in previous shows, which all look like Den. Andree Millar to some degree or another.

Related via Den. atroviolaceum:
Dendrobium Aussie's Chip (2013): 1/2 Den. atroviolaceum
Dendrobium Spider Lily (2011): 1/4 Den. atroviolaceum

Den. convolutum previously:
Dendrobium convolutum 'WK' x self (2014)

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¹ No, seriously. I mean it.
² I feel like there might be bipartisan popular support for limiting the length of our election cycles, as many other countries already have. It's certainly no fun to be in a early primary/caucus state, which is also a swing state, for the 24 months leading up to an election, and I bet residents of New Hampshire would back me up on this.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium cucullatum

This was tagged as Dendrobium pierardii, and we've seen it as D. pierardii in 2013, but it's an orchid so of course the name's changed.

Don't really have anything new to say about it; I found it less appealing in 2016 than in 2013 but that probably says more about me than about the plant. If you find it interesting, the 2013 post is still relevant (except for the name).

Pretty picture: Dendrobium bracteosum f. alba

I hadn't meant to stick two Dendrobiums so close together (last one was only 12 days ago), but they look so different from one another that I feel like it shouldn't count.

The usual form of Den. bracteosum is apparently lavender to pink; some of the more photos that emerge from an image search (e.g.) remind me a bit of crocus, especially the images that lean more to the lavender side of things. I'm less impressed with the white form, but it's possible that that's due to my terrible photo, rather than the plant's inherent inferiority.

Dendrobium bracteosum has a ridiculously long list of synonyms, according to Wikipedia, and I'm not sure what the hell was happening: after being described once in 1886 and christened D. bracteosum, it appears to have been re-named every few years (1894, 1899, 1901, 1910, 1912, 1922, 1923), then in 1983 somebody got all excited and named it four times. Since the same surname is appended to all four of the 1983 botanical names, and that person placed all four in the same genus (Pedilonum), I'm guessing that somebody just really, really wanted to create a new genus from within Dendrobium, but it doesn't appear to have worked; all Pedilonums are still officially Dendrobium as far as I can tell. Curious about why it got so many names, so far apart from one another, but for all I know, that could just be how plant taxonomy worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium anosmum 'Superbum'

This looks very pretty, but it seems like the growth habit would make it awkward to grow. I mean, that has to take up quite a bit of space in a greenhouse or whatever, right? Compared to an upright-growing plant of equal mass?

That's the sort of question I could ask the Illowa people about at the orchid show, if I hadn't already spent so much time complaining about the backgrounds and proofreading. But I have, so I'm a little afraid of them.¹ (This one's sign read "anosum" instead of "anosmum." They're just fucking with me now, right?)

'Superbum' turns out to be Latin (Google Translate renders it as "proud," in English, which may or may not be accurate²), but when I'm feeling especially playful or British or something, I like to read and pronounce it as a synonym for "phenomenal backside."

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¹ (As you probably already know, orchid fanciers can be very menacing.)
² I'm never quite sure how seriously to take Google Translate results.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Violet Fizz 'Luna'

I might side-eye the use of the word "violet" here (even "magenta" might be a stretch), but if it weren't for nonsensical and factually incorrect orchid names, we would have no orchid names at all, so I suppose I'd allow it anyway.

The show didn't have many Dendrobiums this year, but this was probably the prettiest of the ones they had. I was kind of amazed by how thick the stem was: I knew Dendrobium was a large and varied genus, but I wasn't expecting anything like this.

Dendrobium Violet Fizz 'Luna' = Dendrobium Happy Honey x Dendrobium Cassiope (Ref.)

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Love Memory 'Fizz'

Some websites say "Dendrobium nobile Love Memory 'Fizz.'" I don't know what this signifies, exactly, and consequently have no idea whether it's accurate or relevant, but I include it for the sake of completeness.

Should perhaps also note that I find this one a lot more appealing than I do most Dendrobiums. Which also may not be accurate or relevant, but what the hell.

Dendrobium Love Memory 'Fizz' = Dendrobium White Rabbit x Dendrobium Sachi (Ref.)

And now some unfinished Schlumbergera business:

I attempted to narrow down the field of possible names for S. #083A --

-- and instead wound up enlarging it. Part of what happened was that on Monday, there was news about Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX) announcing that he was naming two "autonomous spaceport drone ships" after ships from Iain M. Banks' series of Culture novels, and their names would be Just Read the Instructions and Of Course I Still Love You.

Which sent me down a wikihole of reading all the names of all the ships in all the novels,¹ some of which were very amusing (and possibly even more amusing in context: I wouldn't know),² and that led somehow to the discovery of a Twitter account that periodically proposes new possible ship names along the same lines as the originals.

So, we have an abbreviated version of the list I came up with originally (about half of the originals have been dumped or altered), plus some of the names proposed in the comments of the #083 introduction post, plus a handful of names that occurred to me spontaneously just going about my regular business, plus a substantial chunk of names that are Iain M. Banks Culture ships, other people's ideas for Culture ships, or my own ideas for Culture ships.³ In alphabetical order:

"AbFab Darling:" Enough of an improvement on "Sweetie Darling" that I'm going to forget about "Sweetie" in favor of "AbFab." Successfully evokes intense colors thrown together haphazardly. Suggested by Diana.
"Casino:" Under consideration. You have to admit, the flower's color scheme does overlap that of most (all?) casinos. (Do an image search, I dare you.) Probably a little too generic, ultimately: a particular casino would be more interesting. But I'm sure all the particular casinos would sue me.
"Delirium:" From Paul's suggestion of "Delirious." Also possibly too generic, but nevertheless being considered. Possibly gets me minor nerd cred points for the (very) glancing Neil Gaiman reference.
"Gaga:" Paul's suggestion. I'm a little worried that it might age badly, depending on what Lady Gaga does with herself in the future. I'm, like, thinking about thinking about this one. It does have going for it that it'd be the easiest candidate to type.
"Psychedelic Bunny:" From Nadya W-G's suggestion. There's certainly something psychedelic going on here. The bunny part is questionable.⁴
"She's So Unusual:" Prompted by Paul's riff ("So Unusual") on Claude's suggestion ("Cyndi Lauper"). Makes sense with the plant, and I have nothing against Cyndi Lauper⁵ or the album in question. It could work.
"Tamika Flynn:" Seemed to be the crowd favorite from the original post,⁶ growing on me, and the previous arguments in favor still apply.
"Uh Hey Baby:" I'm cooling off on "Uh Hey Baby," as other, more evocative and colorful options have been suggested, but I'm not yet prepared to rule it out.
"You're Not Going Out Dressed Like That:" Also Culture-ship-esque. Unwieldy, and I cringe imagining all the extra typing I'd have to do, but somehow . . . appropriate?

Honorable mentions, but not serious consideration, to:

"Gravitas Rainbow:" Both a pun⁷ and a gravitas joke. Stolen from the Twitter account. The "rainbow" almost makes it work, but I don't like it well enough to make it permanent.
"It's More of an Aesthetic Question:" Culture-ship-type option. Stolen from the Twitter account. Probably too long to be serious, plus if it's going to be a super-long name, "You're Not Going Out Dressed Like That" is better.
"Naked Celebrity Gravitas:" Stolen from the Twitter account. Not serious, I think, but just imagine the search engine traffic I'd get!
"Ruth Bader Ginsberg:" Not much of a contender, on the grounds that I can't imagine her wearing colors like this, even though I'm sure she probably has at some point or another, and maybe even is right this moment. I'm not sure I've ever seen the Notorious RBG in regular clothes clothes. But there really needs to be something named for Our Most Adorable Supreme Court Justice of All Time.⁸ Maybe an Episcia.
"Tripping Balls:" Well in line with the psychedelia angle, but probably too vulgar for actual consideration.

Anyway. So it looks like we have nine serious(-ish) candidates. Advocate for or against them in the comments;⁹ I plan to decide and announce a name by 2 February. Though I may have to pull a name out of a hat or something: however hard I try, I can't seem to eliminate any more than five options.

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¹ I have not actually ever read any of Iain M. Banks' science fiction novels, though I've read two of his mainstream books, a long time ago (Whit and The Crow Road). I understand that the Culture series are considered to be good by the people who consider that sort of thing.
² e.g. So Much For Subtlety; You Would If You Really Loved Me; I Blame My Mother; I Blame Your Mother, etc. There's also a running joke regarding the word "gravitas," which includes Zero Gravitas, Very Little Gravitas Indeed, and Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall, which will explain some of the name options you'll see momentarily.
³ If you proposed something that didn't wind up on the list, the most likely reasons I didn't include it are that it implies colors that the flower doesn't contain ("Aurora Borealis" or "Mardi Gras" really should be at least partly green), I included a riff on your suggestion but not the actual suggestion, you made the suggestion after I completed writing this post and I didn't want to spend my whole Monday re-editing it, or you suggested a group of related names and I picked one out of that group instead of all of them.
⁴ I have a hard time seeing Schlumbergera blooms as anything other than hummingbirds, personally. But "Psychedelic Hummingbird" seems redundant, so we'll let "Bunny" stand.
⁵ (as if anyone could)
⁶ (among those expressing an opinion)
⁷ (on the TV show Gravity's Rainbow)
⁸ (not counting Clarence Thomas)
⁹ Or say something about the Dendrobium at the top of the page. You remember the Dendrobium, right?

Pretty picture: Dendrobium lindleyi

This is Dendrobium aggregatum according to the tag at the show, but D. lindleyi was correct as of last March, according to Plant List.

Previously (D. lindleyi var. majus): 2013

Pretty pictures: Dendrobium convolutum 'WK' x self

I have in my notes that the pictures here are a bit more impressive than the plant was in person, on account of the flowers being very small.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Aussie's Chip

Dendrobium Aussie's Chip = Dendrobium aberrans x Dendrobium atroviolaceum

Pretty picture: Dendrobium lindleyi var. majus

I'm increasingly impressed by Google's ability to figure out what species I mean when I search for a mangled name. (This one's tag: "Den lindiyl var majus.")

Granted, that's a double-edged sword, since Google also likes to torment me by correcting things that I've typed incorrectly on purpose, or correcting things that aren't even wrong, just less common than whatever it thinks I should be looking for. But even so. It's getting smarter.

Not the greatest picture, alas. So it goes.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Frosty Dawn 'Yen'

I've spent the last five days moving plants in at night and out in the morning -- we had a run of temperatures below 60F/16C. A lot of the plants that are outside will handle that fine (Agave, Strelitzia, Breynia, Amorphophallus), but a few won't so well (Coffea, Aloe, Synadenium, Araucaria), so they have to go back and forth. There are also some (Ananas, Furcraea, Euphorbia, Pachypodium) that might be fine, but I'm scared to leave them out for fear that they'll be damaged.

Moving plants is annoying, and exhausting, and then finding scale again this week is just the honeydew on the cake. I haven't even really gotten a chance to check the other plants for scale yet; I did look at the plants in the same room, and they seemed okay, but I added imidacloprid granules to some of them anyway because you can never be sure you checked everything.

I did also get to see scale through the microscope. It was harder than I expected to find them, and I didn't try to get any pictures because it was night and therefore way too dark. The nymphs are . . . not uncute, actually. Sort of plump like a tardigrade, but with bigger eyes.

That's a terrible description, but it's the best I can come up with. The adults, of course, are horrifying, just as you would expect.

Anyway. I'm thinking the next post'll be Tuesday, probably. In the meantime, here's a Dendrobium that I like. Every so often, the orchid show surprises me with something like this.

Dendrobium Frosty Dawn 'Yen' = Dendrobium Dawn Maree x Dendrobium Lime Frost

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Mini Snowflake

Gosh, you know, I thought after I got back from the orchid show and I was going through the photos I'd taken that this year's batch was pretty decent, but the last couple are making me rethink that.

In fairness, part of the reason why this picture isn't great is that I couldn't get close to the plant.

Not sure how I feel about Dendrobiums in general these days, but this one is impressively large and floriferous, so props to whoever grew it.

Dendrobium Mini Snowflake is Dendrobium aberrans x Dendrobium johnsoniae, for those keeping track.

Pretty pictures: Dendrobium pierardii

This year, I was avoiding the sale tables, because . . . I dunno. It feels weird to take photos, especially if I'm taking photos without buying anything. Also they're only tagged sometimes, which is obnoxious, and there are usually a few people standing across the table from me when I take the pictures, and even if they don't say anything or aren't paying any attention to me, it still feels awkward. But I made an exception for this one because 1) it was tagged, and 2) it was unusual.

Of course, it also sort of reminds me of the Exotic Angel logo. And the lighting was crappy. But whatever. I tried.


The price was $20, which I suppose is probably not bad, for a species orchid. (I don't have much to compare to, though. Is it?)

They sound difficult to grow, though. Being an orchid would be damning enough, but then on top of that, they have a pronounced dormancy from early winter to mid-spring. Plants with dormant periods make me nervous. On top of that, they're apparently one of those plants that's super-touchy about getting too much water (it'll abort the flowers), but also can't get by with no water at all. (The canes shrivel; I couldn't determine whether going completely without water will actually kill them.)

But they're interesting, and the floral displays get a lot bigger than this. I found a good blog post on "pendant" Dendrobiums here, which is highly recommended, if only for the photos. The D. pierardii photo must have at least 200 individual flowers visible. And D. wardianum has some fine-looking flowers as well.

Pretty pictures: Dendrobium Nopporn Green Star

Not really green so much as a kind of dirty yellow, but I suppose "Nopporn Dirty Yellow Star" isn't as marketable. It helps, in the horticultural world, not to be too hung up on color names matching the actual colors. (see: "blue" petunias, "black" tulips, "red" Phalaenopsis, etc.)


The backlighting and black/white background were unfortunate. The people presenting their orchids are obviously not thinking about what it's like to try to photograph them. This isn't even as bad as it gets -- the worst background by miles and miles is the parallel sticks one, which was back again for the 2013 show. I nearly cried when I saw it.¹ This black-and-white one was also back. It's not that it's so terrible, it's just that it breaks up the outlines of the plants and confuses the camera and just generally makes it harder to see the actual plant. It's not, like, Hitler bad, but it's irritating. I wish they'd all just invest in some plain black foam board.


Backlighting should be less of a problem for the 2013 set, at least, since we had a nice overcast day for once. My camera gets confused by partly cloudy days -- it adjusts itself for sun, then the sun goes behind a cloud as I press the button and I wind up with a picture that's overly blue, or vice-versa and I get pictures that are too yellow. For 2013, though, I used the cloudy setting throughout, and mostly got nice pictures as a result. So there's that.

Anyway. Dendrobium Nopporn Green Star is a cross of Dendrobium Burana Jade (seed) x Dendrobium Srimahapote (pollen).

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¹ (exaggeration for comic effect)

Pretty pictures: Dendrobium lawesii

Tag: Den. lawesii

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Green Wonder

"Green" is a stretch. Actually now that I think about it, "Wonder" might be too. The plant comes by both names more or less honestly, though: it's a cross of Dendrobium Wonder Nishii and D. Green Elf, therefore Green Wonder. I might have preferred Wonder Elf, but them's the breaks.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium sulcatum

This was tagged "Onc. sulcatum," a species unknown to Google. I can't imagine anybody who knows anything about orchids looking at this and thinking that it's an Oncidium, so it's probably a case of whoever was making the labels being distracted. Which is fine. Happens to all of us. But this is why one proofreads, no?

wrong tags: 8
incomplete tags: 1
missing tags: 10



I'm not thrilled with this picture, but the way the flowers hung down made it difficult for me to get a better one (this is the best shot of 4). Oh, well.

And of course we have a Scalepocalypse 2012 update:

Ardisia elliptica (1 Nov 2012, basement) -- neemed.
Phlebodium aureum 'Mandianum' (1 Nov 2012, basement) -- neem + imidacloprid granules.

Rough week in the fight against scale. The Ardisia is the one I grew from the seeds of the original plant; the Phlebodium had been looking exceptionally impressive in the last few weeks, and I was feeling quite pleased with it. So naturally it should get scale so bad that several of the fronds would need to be cut off.

The only bright spot is that I thought I saw scale on one of the Ficus benjaminas --

-- but it turned out to be something else. The bumps don't break when squished, they're present on both sides of the leaf,

and there's reason to suspect edema. The plant has been doing very well for me in the last year or so, well enough that I'd repotted it in August. Because it's now in a larger pot, it's staying wet longer, and because it's on a table next to the south window in the living room, it tends to be a bit on the cold side. The most reliable way to cause edema in susceptible species is to leave them simultaneously cold and wet, and that's what I think I've done. (Similar things have appeared on a few other plants in the house: Yucca guatemalensis, Billbergia nutans, Pachycereus marginatus.)

There's still the chance that it's something other than edema, but at this point I'm thrilled anytime something goes wrong that isn't scale.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Spider Lily

I wish that I could have taken this picture without all the background clutter, but alas. I didn't shrink this photo down as much as usual, so there's a fair amount of detail there to be seen, if you open it in a separate window. Alternately, you can just check out the photos of this plant from previous shows: (2010) (2011).



Scalepocalypse 2012 update:

Callisia fragrans (25 Sep 2012, basement) -- discarded.