Pretty pictures: Rhyncattleanthe Mary Weiss (?)

And here's the last orchid from last year's show; it's a contender for my favorite out of that batch just because the color is so weird. (The other contenders: Phalaenopsis Mistral's Sunrise Flame 'Mendenhall', Dendrobium pierardii, Caulaelia Snowflake 'Northland' (which you'll be seeing again in 2014), Rhyncholaeliocattleya Dick Smith 'Aloha Spirit,' Vanda Fuchs Cherry Chips, Cattleya amethystoglossa. It'd be a difficult decision, if someone forced me to pick a favorite.

Rhyncattleanthe Mary Weiss = Rhyncattleanthe Memoria Christine Sineni x Rhyncholaeliocattleya George King

As for the blog, well, the husband has returned, so we're good there, but then I did something terrible to my back while trying to pick up the big Murraya paniculata on Saturday, which is complicating my life in a number of ways. So I feel pretty confident in saying that regular blogging (whatever that even means anymore) will resume at some point, but I have no idea when or what that will be.

I'm considering some kind of public service announcement post about what a bad idea it is to put large plants into clay pots. I just need a rhyming slogan of some kind.

Pretty pictures: Paphiopedilum Bit-O'-Sunshine x Paph. William Sanders x Paph. malipoense

Since my last post, there's been a family event (death in the family on the husband's side). It would be complicated to explain, but the upshot is that although it's not a big emotional crisis for anybody involved, for the first time since 2006, I'm sleeping by myself, and all alone in the house,^1,2 and everything is now all upside down and backwards.

So either I'm going to wind up writing lots of blog posts out of boredom, or I'm going to be writing no blog posts at all because I'm trying to clean the house top to bottom. Physical stuff seems more distracting than verbal stuff right now, so the smart money is on cleaning / no blog.

In the meantime, here is a new orchid for you to look at, and I will be back when I can.

All I have on this one from the tag is "Paphiopedilum Bit-O'-Sunshine x Paphiopedilum William Sanders x Paphiopedilum malipoense". That could be

(Paph. Bit-O'-Sunshine x Paph. William Sanders) x Paph. malipoense,

or it could be

Paph. Bit-O'-Sunshine x (Paph. William Sanders x Paph. malipoense).

It looks like the tag is trying to suggest the first option, so that would be my guess, but parentheses would have helped clarify.

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¹ (save for Sheba, who tries, but is not a great conversationalist. She's really more of a listener than a talker, and honestly, she's not even that great of a listener sometimes. It depends on how often I'm saying "Sheba.")
² I would have gone with the husband, but you would be surprised how difficult it is to find someone to plant-sit 1000+ plants for a week on short notice, and many of the Anthurium seedlings in the basement wouldn't be able to survive a week without watering. To say nothing of trying to find someone to take care of Sheba. Maybe if we'd had more time to figure something out, I could have gone, but it was all pretty abrupt.

Pretty picture: Tolumnia Tequila Sunrise; also, New Plant

This particular orchid is unknown to the orchid registry where I usually confirm names, or at least it was as of a year ago, when I was looking for IDs on the 2013 batch. I found plenty of orchids named "Tequila Sunrise" (Cymbidium, Miltoniopsis, Phalaenopsis, Dendrobium, Rhyncholaeliocattleya), but Tolumnia wasn't among them. So I can't tell you what the parents are for this one.

And that is all I can say about Tolumnia Tequila Sunrise.

I came very, very close to not going to the orchid show this year,¹ but I went. And it was . . . okay? Every year, it feels like the show is smaller than the year before, though I don't think it's actually changing in size; I think there's just something weird about the way I store orchid show information in my brain. (I also always think that I got better pictures than in previous years, which never turns out to be true either.)

Compared to previous years, the 2014 pictures seem unusually heavy on pink, purple, and shades in between, and unusually light on yellows and oranges. I tried to get fewer Paphiopedilum and Phragmipedium photos,² though I wasn't entirely successful. I tried to get more Masdevallia pictures, but I don't think I succeeded at that either: there just weren't that many there, and the ones that were there weren't actually that interesting. Certainly nothing anywhere near Masdevallia Sunset Jaguar 'Night Breed,' which I would have loved to have seen again.

Regular posting will remain slow for the next week or two, while I sift through and upload this year's batch of photos. I'm hoping I'll be done with that by the time I run out of 2013 photos (at the end of March).

While in the Quad Cities, we also went to Home Depot, because I wanted to get a bunch of Glidden paint color cards. The reason is weird,³ and I felt really conspicuous and self-conscious about doing it, with the result that I was too distracted to pick up any yellows.⁴ Then I felt bad about coming to the store just to load up on paint cards,⁵ so I wound up buying an Anthurium, just like last year. $10 for a 4-inch pot (which seems to have become standard around here), but the color⁶ is unusual,⁷ and if it's interfertile with the plants I already have, it'll be good for breeding purposes.

The tag didn't include a variety name, and a trip to the Westland Greenhouses website didn't turn up any possible cultivars, but I e-mailed the company yesterday and they said it was Anthurium 'Joli.' I also learned from their website that, however unlikely it sounds, my 'Joli' was grown in Grand Bend, Ontario. Which I am still trying to get my head around. (How is heating a greenhouse in Ontario not prohibitively expensive? How can Ontario compete with Florida?)

Not only are they Canadian and prompt to reply to e-mails, but the instructions on the Westland Greenhouses tag are much, much better than the instructions from the Just Add Ice tag, and includes "don't place in direct sunlight during the summer months" and "add fertilizer once after every six waterings." Neither of those are exactly what I'd recommend, and of course "better than the Just Add Ice care instructions" is a very low bar to clear, but I am nevertheless pleased, and give you permission to purchase Westland-grown Anthuriums.

Also making me happy is the tag's shape. Perhaps I have a smutty mind, but, well -- you can see it, right?

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¹ Back problems, probably caused by me trying to get through the weekly watering cycle faster than normal. (I didn't want to come back from the show on Saturday and still have a hundred plants to water.) We wound up going late on Sunday, which seems to have worked out fine.
² They were there, of course. I just tried not to take many pictures of them, because I really want to be able to grow them and can't. Seeing photos of them just reminds me of this, and then I get depressed.
It's not like I'm great at growing any orchids, but I only get upset about not being able to do Paphs and Phrags.
³ It's been bothering me, when I write stuff down about the Anthurium seedlings, that I don't have better ways of describing spathe colors than just "red," "dark red," "pink-red," etc. I mean, that's fine as far as it goes, but it'd be nice to make finer distinctions, in cases where, for example, flower A is red, and so is flower B, but Flower A and flower B aren't the same color. Now that I have a set of cards to compare to, though, I can say that flower A is "Cherries Jubilee" red, and flower B is "Red Rose Bouquet" red, and feel more or less confident that I have made an important distinction. (note: All the Glidden color names in this post are ™ Glidden. In using their names, I do not mean to imply in any way that Glidden approves of me, my blog, Anthuriums, or plants in general; I'm just using them as a convenient means of identifying specific colors. Conversely, I don't want to imply that I approve of Glidden, their marketing department's color-namers, Glidden products, or paint in general, either.)
It may or may not actually be an important distinction, of course. But I've noticed in the plant patents I've looked at that they frequently make references to standardized colors (one set of which is apparently the Exotica Horticultural Color Guide, mentioned in the Dracaena deremensis 'Warneckei' profile), so it seems like this is something I'll eventually have to think about. May as well start now, I figure.
I tested this out yesterday. Compared cards to a couple spathes before dinner, and then checked all the plants that are currently blooming after dinner. My pre- and post-dinner assessments didn't agree, so there are clearly some problems with the whole concept. But it may be better than nothing.
⁴ The logic at the time was that I was so vanishingly unlikely to ever have a yellow Anthurium spathe to describe that I had no need to pick up any yellow cards. Then I got home and remembered: spadices. Almost all my spadices are yellow. D'oh!
⁵ The husband assured me that Glidden and Home Depot would manage to scrape by financially, even if I took their paint cards, and I believed him, but 1) he told me this after I'd already bought the plant, and 2) there's a good chance that I was rationalizing buying the plant with the paint chips thing. It's not like I need more plants, after all. And it's really not like I need more Anthuriums. But I wanted it. So there you go.
⁶ (somewhere between Blooming Fuchsia and Sexy Pink for new spathes, aging to Watermelon Smoothie)
⁷ Though Mario Speedwagon (#200) is similar, and is looking extremely interesting. The spathe is closest to Blooming Fuchsia (a darkish pink-purple) so far. The problem being that they often change as they develop, so Mario will get more interesting or less interesting with time, and I don't know which it's going to be yet.

Pretty picture: NOID NOID orchid

I don't know if there wasn't a tag, or if I just missed getting a picture of it. But in any event, I don't know what this is. Looks sort of Phalaenopsisish to me, but the photo's not great, and those are some mighty big roots, for a Phalaenopsis, so I am prepared to believe pretty much any ID anybody wants to offer.

Pretty picture: Rhyncholaeliocattleya Seto Rainbow 'Fantasy'

I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: I cannot wait for the day when every combination of "good" words has been used up for orchid hybrids, and the hybridizers have to resort to names like:

Rhyncholaeliocattleya Booger 'Donkey Ladle'
Paphiopedilum Soulless Infection 'Cthulhu'
Phalaenopsis Cursed 'Honk Fart.'

It's gonna happen someday. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but someday.

They'll probably still be pretty, though. A rose by any other name and all.

Rhyncholaeliocattleya Seto Rainbow 'Fantasy' = Cattleya Irene's Song x Rhyncholaeliocattleya Hawaiian Lightning

Pretty pictures: Paphiopedilum vietnamense

*wistful, longing sigh*

Pretty picture: Phalaenopsis Mistral's Sunrise Flame 'Mendenhall'

This is a very strong contender for my favorite orchid from the whole 2013 orchid show. (Other contenders: Dendrobium pierardii, Caulaelia Snowflake Northland, Rhyncholaeliocattleya Dick Smith 'Aloha Spirit,' Vanda Fuchs Cherry Chips, Cattleya amethystoglossa) Not sure what the appeal is exactly, other than it being sort of an unusual color. But it was the first time in a long time that I looked at a Phalaenopsis and said wow, I'd really like to have one of those.

It doesn't hurt that it co-ordinates nicely with the current blog colors, though that couldn't have been why I liked it at the show.

Phalaenopsis Mistral's Sunrise Flame 'Mendenhall' = Phalaenopsis Golden Bells x Phalaenopsis Habsburg

Pretty picture: Angraecum sesquipedale

Another photo taken from a distance. Hence the blurriness. Though my camera doesn't handle whites and reds well anyway, so it would likely have been blurry if I'd gotten close too.

I do kind of like the flower. Maybe I'm just reacting to the shape? (It's different from the rounded petals and sepals of Phalaenopsis, therefore it's good?)

Pretty picture: Cattleya Betty Ford

Some business to get out of the way first: it occurred to me that I could make a PayPal button for the Coffea seed offer. So here that is. I hope it works. (Blogger won't let me test the button in Preview mode.)

[button removed because seeds no longer available]

So far, only two people have e-mailed about the seeds, and that batch has 205, so in theory eighteen more U.S. readers can order seeds before I run out. I'm planning to mail them out on or around 28 February, though if the weather looks like it's going to be exceptionally bad or cold that week I might wait until the following week. (I'll e-mail you first if that's the case.) You should be able to start soaking them as soon as they arrive, and sow them the day after that.

Sorry for not thinking of this sooner, but PayPal won't let me sell things through the donate button (top of the sidebar), so I had kind of overlooked the fact that I could still use PayPal to sell things by making a new button, and didn't realize that was an option until late last night.

Now for the orchid. It was tagged "Rnc. Betty Ford," but as best as I can determine that's now Cattleya Betty Ford.

Cattleya Betty Ford = Cattleya Barbara's Delight x Cattleya Nigrescent

Pretty picture: Ascocenda Thonglor x Ascocenda Yip Sum Wah

Oh. This picture. I remember this one, mainly because trying to get the color properly adjusted took a very long time and was ultimately unsuccessful. It's a shame, too, because the flowers are really pretty.

Pretty (?) picture: "Cirro. Lion King"

I don't know what this one actually is. "Cirro." doesn't appear to be a standard orchid genus abbreviation, so that's not helpful. There does exist a Cirrhopetalum Lion King, which under normal circumstances you'd think that obviously that's the plant, but that plant's flowers don't look much like this one's flowers. There's also a Bulbophyllum Lion King, which might be the same thing as the Cirrhopetalum Lion King, as the petals are similarly long and weird (picture), the genus Cirrhopetalum was apparently recently separated from Bulbophyllum, and orchid categorization is such a mess that I've come to think of the names as little more than random stabs in the dark anyway.

But the fact still remains that the flowers on this plant are only vaguely like those on Cirrhopetalum Lion King, so even if that's the intended ID, I'm not sure it's right.

But then again, using Google image search to try to make this determination is probably also a mistake, as Google image search is frequently also not much better than random stabs in the dark.

So I dunno. Open to guesses from readers on this one.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Aussie's Chip

Dendrobium Aussie's Chip = Dendrobium aberrans x Dendrobium atroviolaceum

Pretty picture: Cattleya amethystoglossa

Still with the itching. Petroleum jelly is the most effective thing I've tried so far, though 1) it's still not that effective, and 2) it's not entirely comfortable by itself. At this point, my spirit is basically broken, w/r/t the itching, and I don't expect to find an actual fix for the problem.

So, on to the orchid. This is a nice one.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Prince Edward of York

Well. It's looking increasingly like my itchiness problem is nothing more than dry skin, and possibly it's happening for the first time this winter because this winter is seriously cold, relative to recent previous ones. I mean, January is always cold, but it seems like this winter got colder a lot earlier, has been very cold more often, and has provided unusually few opportunities for thaws. As I write this, on 4 January, the forecast for the day you're reading this, 6 January, is for a high temperature of -10F / -23C. A high temperature. As in, the very warmest it's supposed to get is -10. Wind chill of -44F / -42C, at 8 in the morning.

None of this is unprecedented in Iowa history; in fact, my understanding is that this sort of thing used to happen all the time. (The all-time record low for Iowa City, allegedly, is -26F / -32C, which doesn't factor in a wind chill. We may come close to that on Sunday night: -19F / -28C, according to the forecast, but it's not going to be a record.) But temperatures like this are relatively new to me, and more importantly, new to my skin. Even with all the plants in here, any air creeping in from outside the house will be very dry, and the unusual cold will mean that the furnace will be pumping in hot, dry air much of the time, too, so the plants may not be able to help much. (On the other hand, imagine how much itching I'd be doing without the plants. Maybe I need more plants.)

So: probably dry skin. I'm guessing this partly based on a recent conversation with my dad, who said that he had a really itchy winter the year after we moved from Texas back to Iowa, and that baby oil made it tolerable. And apparently it's never recurred (at least not to the same degree), which was a comforting thought until we actually got some baby oil and I tried it and the itching come back worse than it had been previously. Shaving the itchiest areas actually seems to help more than anything, though that presents its own problems. The itching is caused by nothing in particular, and nothing makes it better. Were it not for the fact that no matter how bad it gets, it comes and goes entirely on its own, so occasionally I'll get a 36-hour break (though most are closer to nine hours), I wouldn't be able to water the plants, write blog posts like this (which is just scintillating, I know), or sleep. If I'm sounding a little desperate and deranged here, well, that's because I am.

Meanwhile: orchid picture. Though it feels a bit wrong to be contemplating orchids with weather like this. Or not wrong, but nonsensical. Surely the same planet can't contain -44F wind chills and tropical orchids at the same time, can it?

Paphiopedilum Prince Edward of York = Paphiopedilum rothschildianum x Paphiopedilum sanderianum

Pretty picture: Miltoniopsis Echo Bay

Previously.

Miltoniopsis Echo Bay = Miltoniopsis Woodlands x Miltoniopsis Rose Bay

Pretty picture: Guaricyclia Kyoguchi

The itching came back; last Friday was incredibly bad, though most days have been so light as to have been mostly ignorable, and it only seems to be happening on days when I take showers, so I'm beginning to think that maybe my skin's become allergic to being clean, or something.

The contractors are back too, which is less terrible, but we've discovered a big patch of mold in my office, so that's going to be massively disruptive at some point or another (and has already been at least a little disruptive). Sheba's started biting patches of fur off again (NOOOO SHEBA WHYYY), and I'm still finding scale but at least it increasingly seems to be dead scale.

There are a few random plant events to report. I will attempt to get to those at some point in the next week or two.

Guaricyclia Kyoguchi = Guarianthe aurantiaca x Encyclia incumbens

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Huddle 'Joan'

The continuing story of Why Is Mr. Subjunctive So Damned Itchy All The Time:

Medical professionals have been consulted. Unfortunately, by the time I saw a doctor, the itching hadn't happened for a few days,¹ so there was nothing to show anybody, not that they would have seen anything in the first place, because it never looked like anything, but there was even more nothing to see than usual. And so the visit was inconclusive as to the cause of the itching. We did pretty well eliminate scabies, mold, and imidacloprid as possibilities, though, which just getting scabies struck from the list was worth the trip all by itself. And this is all basically what I expected, that the first doctor's visit wasn't going to settle anything. I was really just hoping to pare down the number of possibilities.

There was also an incidental diagnosis of a very mild case of athlete's foot, though I don't know how that could have happened and am not sure I'm entirely on-board with that diagnosis² but whatever sure I can get some Lotrimin why the hell not.

The leading theories are presently fleas, stress, and dry air/skin. The first will, in theory, resolve itself sooner or later.³ I don't know that there's much of anything I can do about stress, and trying to think of something to do about it would only make it worse, so probably the best thing for me to do about that is to forget that it's even a theory. And the dry air/skin thing is questionable, but the only one she had a concrete suggestion for, so I'm supposed to use different soap and then a new cream afterward and call her in a week to tell her whether that's helped. That seems kind of pointless, though, while I'm not experiencing any itching, because what am I going to report? "I changed soap like you said and went from having no symptoms to . . . also having no symptoms?"

Anyway. Not really feeling any better about the plant collection, and the contractors are actually worse now, 'cause they're done with the outside stuff, mostly, so now they've moved in. So regular blogging is still on hold, for however long it turns out to be. But I've just asked you to think, for a second time, about my skin, and scabies, and added a new horror: athlete's foot. So here is an orchid show picture to make us even again:

Paphiopedilum Huddle 'Joan' = Paphiopedilum Hellas x Paphiopedilum F. C. Puddle

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¹ Tiny bit of itching on Saturday, but nothing like it had been. No itching at all on Friday, Sunday, or up to 2 PM on Monday.
² (it only vaguely resembles any of the images that come up in Google, plus this would be the first time anyone's ever used the word "athlete" in any kind of relation to me so it feels pretty wrong medically and linguistically. I mean, I realize she's the doctor and she would know, but still.)
³ Point of interest: I saw my first actual flea since this whole thing began, last Friday, on my arm. It's plausible that it may have come in from outside with Sheba (who had been outside immediately before, and who was in my office at the time because there were contractors present and she has to stay in the office with me while that's going on). It wouldn't necessarily make a whole lot of sense for a dog-preferring flea to jump on to a dog, then off the dog onto a person, but they call them fleas, not geniuses, so maybe.
Sheba remains at normal levels of scratching and biting; some patches of fur have filled in a lot faster than others, but there's general progress across the board, and she's done with all her medication as of Monday. Also she said to tell you hi.

Pretty pictures: Vanda cristata

I seem to have accidentally fallen into a blogging-hiatus hole. Among other problems to be detailed below, I'm really coming to despise the plant collection:¹ they appear to be playing a game of chicken, to see which of them can have the most and largest problems without getting thrown in the trash. (Currently neck and neck for the lead: Agave desmettiana and Agave americana.)

Meanwhile, we've progressed from The Week of Sheba's Unexplained Itching to The Week of a Grandparent's Funeral to The Week of Contractors. A plan that was started roughly two years ago has finally started being executed, so we're getting some work done on the house, but our influence over which repairs, when they happen, and how they're performed is very minimal.² So there are early-morning noises, and strange people coming in and out, and at one point the plant room door was replaced.³ The whole thing's been disruptive and unpleasant. It surely says something that the high point of the last three weeks was a funeral.

As for Sheba, she's back to normal amounts of scratching and biting since she started the flea treatment, which is great. Unfortunately, the improvement was accompanied by an ear infection⁴ and fantastic, amazing dandruff,⁵ so we don't seem to be winning on that front either.

The reader may recall that I've been itching quite a bit myself lately, and that it got dramatically worse at about the same time that Sheba's latest outbreak began, so it'd be logical to think that when she's doing better, I'm also doing better. But no. My problem was apparently never the fleas.⁶ The itching is pretty terrible on its own, but it also wakes me up at night sometimes, or keeps me from getting to sleep, which amplifies all the previously-mentioned minor annoyances. And of course I have no idea what is causing it or how to make it go away; so far, all I can really do is take Benadryl, which may or may not do anything for the itching, but at least knocks me out to the point where I don't have to be consciously aware of the itching anymore.

As I write this on Monday morning, this week has not yet made its particular flavor apparent. Depression? Loss of internet service and/or electricity? Bureaucratic runarounds? Car trouble? Whooping cough? Sinkholes? Plague of frogs? Robot uprising? Time will tell. Posting is expected to stay confined to once-a-week orchid posts for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, here are some bad photographs of a not-particularly-photogenic orchid.

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¹ Not hyperbole. I know I've said things like this before and then come back around to liking plants again, but it feels like we're surely coming to the climax of . . . something. Two years is a long time to keep a hobby that's costing more in aggravation than it's giving you in pleasure, and it's getting harder to believe that stuff might get better.
² In mitigation: we're not paying for any of it, so it feels churlish to complain. (Not that that stops me, because since when have I minded being thought of as churlish?)
³ Not so terrible in and of itself, but they started when it was 39F / 4C outside, and involved a lot of people just standing around while there was a giant hole in the wall of the plant room, cold breeze blowing freely in and out, so I was understandably worried. (I spent the majority of that day in my office with the door closed trying to pretend that it wasn't happening.) It doesn't appear to have harmed any of the plants yet, but this wasn't that long ago, so they could just be slow to react.
⁴ Not diagnosed by the vet, but the smell is awfully familiar, and obviously emanating from her ear, so.
⁵ If I were a dandruff connoisseur -- and you know that one has to exist, somewhere -- this would be the best week of my life. Right up there with the first time I ever saw The Breakfast Club, probably.

^ This .gif is also a pretty good representation of how I feel when my itching gets really bad.
⁶ (which might explain why I never saw any)

Pretty picture: Cymbidium lowianum 'Pitts'

Pretty picture: Rhynchostylis gigantea