Ideas

For the record, I'm kind of miffed that nobody's taken me up on the Angelonia 'Jolie' idea from earlier. (One could even, as Hermes noted, plant your Angelonia 'Jolie' in your "Brad Pit.")

But that's okay. I have others. Like for example, I want the next hot Aloe hybrids to be named 'Dolly' and/or 'Govna.' I'm sort of amazed Aloe 'Dolly,' at least, doesn't already exist. Seriously, people. This needs to happen.

And although it's not a pun particularly, I think 'Knife Pile' would be a nice name for an Agave. "Knife Pile" comes from the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator; it's what you'd get back if you didn't type anything and just hit enter. As names go, I think Agave 'Knife Pile' is both memorable and appropriate.

The name generator, incidentally, has been altered since I first saw it, and now returns "Blaster Commando" for a null entry, which would also make a good Agave name, albeit one that's a little less straightforwardly descriptive.

Pretty (?) pictures: Tacca chantrieri flower

The ex-job has gotten some Tacca chantrieri plants in, in bud. They're surprisingly big, maybe three feet (0.9 m) tall, with multiple flowers and buds. I didn't get any pictures of the whole plant, because when I was thinking of it, there were people in the way, and then when there weren't people in the way anymore, I forgot I'd intended to. But I did at least get photos of the flowers.

The plants themselves have big, broad, green leaves with maybe a slight iridescent/metallic shine to them. (See davesgarden.com pics here and here.) If you didn't know what they were, you'd probably guess a new variety of peace lily. Like peace lilies, they're still attractive when not in flower.


We never get them for sale around here -- these are the first ones I've seen in the area, as far as I can remember, in the three or four years that I've been going around to look at different garden centers -- and these weren't too ridiculously priced. I don't remember how much they were, but it wasn't outrageous. I was, however, not even a little bit tempted, because my understanding is that they're fussy as hell.

WCW had one, or maybe two, plants that she brought from home to overwinter in the greenhouse a couple years ago. They didn't make it, and if I remember correctly it wasn't the first time she'd tried. If WCW can't grow something, the odds are very good that I can't either, so I wasn't tempted at all.


There are at least three other Tacca species: T. integrifolia is also occasionally cultivated as a houseplant, and then davesgarden.com also lists T. nivea and T. leontopetaloides. They all have the same structural plan for the flowers: three large bracts, a bunch of "whiskers" extending out and down, and then a batch of true flowers in the middle of the whole thing. None of the pictures in this post show the true flowers completely opened: they're all flexed back away from the flowers' centers, which are the weird things with the red balls in them.

The genus is also of interest to me for being one of very few words that a person can spell using only the letters of the bases in DNA, which are A, C, G, and T. You can spell a, at, cat, tag, gaga, act, tact, and that's about it for real everyday words. Caca, maybe, if you include Spanish words. Tata or Ta-ta if slang's allowed. GATT if we permit acronyms.


Tacca also works, for a fifth letter, and if movie titles are permitted then you can get as far as the seven-letter Gattaca (which wasn't a word until the movie, but I think it counts now) before you hit a wall.

So if anybody discovers a fifth species of Tacca, I would very much appreciate it if they would name it Tacca gaga, Tacca gattaca, Tacca attacca (TACK-ah ah-TACK-ah), Tacca gagaccat (TACK-ah GAH-gah-cat -- which would also be a palindrome, for triple cool points), or something along those lines. I can be flexible on the exact name; I just care about the letters.

I thank the Tacca taxonomists of the world for their time and attention.

Ideas:

I firmly believe that the world needs a hybrid variety of Ficus named 'I Said To That's Fy.'

I'd also be pretty happy about a hybrid Fuchsia named 'Tense.'

Or a Fuchsia 'Rama.'

DISCLAIMER: Preceding jokes are contingent upon use of the American pronunciation for the genera involved and may not work for people in other countries or speaking other languages.

Idea:

More cultivar names, potentially, though these might be a tad more obscure than my previous suggestions. On the other hand, there are so many Lilium hybrids out there, and more happening all the time, that I figure the breeders and developers would appreciate some suggestions, however little mass appeal they might have. So, I give you:

The older crowd might appreciate Lilium 'Gish.'

Their younger, hornier grandsons would find Lilium 'Garcia' more to their liking.

I'm not sure if Lilium 'Tomlin' is cheating or not. Maybe it would be okay if referred to as the "Tomlin Lily," instead of with the botanical name Lilium. And of course if "Tomlin Lily" is okay, we could also have Lilium 'Allen.' (Special bonus relevance: Lily Allen wikiposedly studied horticulture before her music career happened, so she's one of very few people in the world who could both be the subject of this joke and appreciate it properly.)

Just throwing them out there; nobody has to use them. Though I would like to see Lilium 'Gish' sometime. Kinda surprised it hasn't happened already.

Idea:

I have another idea for a cultivar name that needs to happen. The ideal name for the next hot variety of Ajuga should be . . . Ajuga 'Jamaica.'

 

Or possibly Ajuga 'Jamaica Ooo I Wanna Take Ya,' though that's harder to fit on the tags, I suppose. And perhaps puts too fine a point on the joke. I have difficulty knowing where to stop sometimes.

This needs to happen. Ajuga breeders, please take heed. Thank you.

Idea:

I had an idea today that I was immensely proud of. The perfect cultivar name for the next big variety of Angelonia is:

[drumroll]

 

 

 

 


Angelonia 'Jolie.'

Please, someone, make this happen for me.