Pretty picture: Lycaste Capricorn

Not a lot to say about this one, except that I appreciate how the different blooms are facing different directions. A related plant¹ at the show had two flowers of almost exactly the same size, facing almost exactly the same direction, and the photo looks like I took a picture of one and then photoshopped it using the clone tool. (You'll see its post in February.)

I couldn't find any photos to verify the ID here, but I'm assuming it's correct, in which case the ancestry information is:

Lycaste Capricorn = Lycaste lasioglossa x Lycaste Wyld Court (Ref.)

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¹ The relative is a Lycamerlycaste, an intergeneric hybrid of Lycaste and Sudamerlycaste. I'd never heard of the latter genus before writing this post, and I'm so happy I bothered to look it up. Sudamerlycaste appears partial to green flowers, which you wouldn't think would be that interesting or pretty, but oh my god. (S. locusta, from the "oh" and "god" pictures, is allegedly even apple-scented. Be still my heart.)

Pretty picture: Lycaste x balliae

This is a terrible photo, but in my defense, it was sort of in rough shape to begin with, judging from the sepal margins, and it was in a weird location, too. Backlighting helps make colors more saturated, but then lens flare becomes a bigger potential problem.

Lycaste are uncommon in the orchid show. Not sure if that's because they're difficult, or just not to the tastes of the people in the Illowa Orchid Society, or what. I've never seen any for sale in garden centers or whatever, even garden centers like my ex-employer's, that occasionally brought in unusual genera. I've seen two other Lycaste in the show, both last year: Lycaste Dainty; Lycaste Alan Salzman.

This was tagged as "Lyc. Balliae," but the orchid registry says it's a naturally-occurring hybrid of Lycaste macrophylla x Lycaste virginalis (Ref.); described 1898 (Ref.), so it seems to me like "Lycaste x balliae" would be more technically proper. The registry lists both versions, though. One also occasionally sees it described as Lyc. skinneri x Lyc. macrophylla; Lyc. skinneri turns out to be an obsolete synonym for Lyc. virginalis, though, so this isn't actually in conflict.

Pretty picture: Lycaste Dainty

Here's another Lycaste (previously: Lycaste Alan Salzman). It has no colors in common with the previous Lycaste, and I'm not really seeing a similarity in shape either, but I suppose I can still believe that the two are related. It'd hardly be the first time that an orchid did something that didn't make sense to me.

It helps that the International Orchid Register has heard of it, and believes it to be a hybrid of Lycaste candida x Lycaste campbellii. (Ref.)

Pretty pictures: Lycaste Alan Salzman

This genus is new to PATSP, though there will be a different Lycaste post in January. Not sure how I feel about this exactly. It's not actually peloric, but it looked enough like a peloric flower on first glance that I was confused for a while. I suppose the color is pleasant, and the flower is at least big, so it's got that going for it.

Lycaste Alan Salzman = Lycaste Island of Vulcorn x Lycaste Shoalhaven (Ref.)

Anthurium seedlings update:

Not a lot going on lately with the Anthuriums; a lot of the previously-pollinated flowers have produced ripe berries now, so I've sown seeds from:

#005 "Chad Michaels"
#059 "Bijoux Tuit"
#108 "Deena Sequins"
#200 "Mario Speedwagon"
#234 "Ross Koz"
#239 "Russ Teanale"
#271 "Wanda Reulthemal"
#273 "Wes Coast"
#276 "Zach Religious"

and I have potted up seedlings from all but three of those; still waiting to pot something up from 059 (Bijoux), 108 (Deena), and 200 (Mario).

And by the time you read this, I will probably have sown seeds from #002 "Alexis Mateo" as well.

There have been a couple recent seedling deaths, but only among the newer / smaller 3" plants -- nobody you'd know.

No thrips sightings in quite a while, which is good news, though some of the reason for that may be because there aren't many active blooms at the moment. I haven't seen a first-time bloomer since late August (#171 "Genevieve la Difference"), and I think all of the buds that the Anthuriums have tried to produce lately have aborted without developing. The thrips seem to prefer the spathes to the leaves, so with fewer spathes to choose from than usual, and with everything being sticky from the oil / dishwashing liquid mixture I sprayed everywhere, the thrips have been having a tough time.

Also started lots of new seeds from the NOID purple (41 seeds), NOID pink (31), and 'White Gemini' (51) lately, moved a lot of seedlings to 3" pots, and have a first new bud on 'Joli' now (which may still drop, but it's developed further than most, so I may be able to work in some 'Joli' genes after all).

'Midori' has definitely been pollinated, and I count 14 developing berries right now. If 'Midori' is typical, then Anthurium math says I should get about 16 seeds and 10 seedlings from that pollination, of which maybe 1 will live long enough to produce an inflorescence. But I can try again with the next 'Midori' bloom, too.

I'm also trying to decide which of the seedlings to move up into 6" pots; a lot of the 4" plants are floppy and easily tangled in one another. Because they're all flopped together, most of them aren't getting enough light anymore, and they can't really sucker, so some of them are going to need more room, like, yesterday. The trouble is that very time I start trying to make a list of possible candidates for promotion to 6", I wind up with like 15 plants on the list, and there's no way I have room for 15 6-inch Anthuriums anywhere in the house, so I'm going to have to do a lot of rearranging, it looks like. And maybe some throwing-away and selling.

So, overall, things are more boring and less pretty than I expected, but the indications for the future are fairly positive: lots of new plants, it's possible if not likely that the thrips and scale are gone, and I may be able to start thinning the herd by selling some of them on Craigslist once they start blooming again.