Announcements

One: the article I mentioned writing last year for the Old Farmer's Almanac Garden Guide is out; print copies have been available on their website for a few months. I've also heard of print copies being available in actual stores, though I have yet to witness this in the wild.

Two: you've probably figured this out already, but I think I'm done writing the blog. Or at least I'm going to stop feeling bad about not writing posts, which probably amounts to the same thing in the long run. (It leaves the door open in case I later decide that there's something I just have to share with the world.)

There are multiple reasons for this, but the two biggest are 1) plant-writing burnout and 2) discovering that I am substantially happier when I spend less time on the internet.¹ Despite 1), I am still going to have and grow way too many plants; despite 2), I am still going to approve comments² and respond to e-mails and update photos and names in the seedling galleries (because sometimes I have found the galleries convenient for my own purposes). Blog-adjacent stuff will all probably happen much more slowly than it used to, though, and some of you know that I'm already wildly inconsistent when it comes to e-mail. If I manage to name the Schlumbergera seedlings from the 2018-19 season, I will probably post to let you know what those are, though I don't promise to explain the names.

It's also possible that a few older posts may be edited or deleted from time to time, as I'm increasingly uncomfortable with having so much personal stuff on here. (I know nothing ever goes away completely on the internet, but it seems like there'd be no down side to making some things more difficult to find.) Changes to the archives, if any, will likely be so minimal that you won't notice them,³ and to be honest, combing through it all and editing stuff feels like it would be a lot of work, so I'm not sure this is likely.

I wish I had other houseplant blogs to point you to, but I don't. I don't encounter very many to begin with; I can only remember seeing three actively-updated ones in the last two or three years. Of those, one is primarily interested in showing you Instagram-worthy photos of plants, without much actual information. The other two offered information, but it was the same information you could get by doing a search on-line: they weren't bringing personal experience or "here's what the books don't tell you:" or trivia about the plants. I mean, goodness knows it didn't always work, but I did try to throw in something that wasn't just "water when dry; bright indirect light; propagate by cuttings; watch for scale, mealybugs, and spider mites."

Though I suppose sometimes you just want to know when to water your Aloe, and digressions about artificial insemination of sheep and rants about the herbal supplement industry only get in the way.

If readers want to suggest some other houseplant blogs for other readers to look at, please, leave a link in the comments. I promise not to say if your blog is one of the ones I refused to endorse above.⁴ Though I also don't promise to publish your comment: see footnote 2.

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¹ This piece (probably NSFW) by Patricia Lockwood in the London Review of Books, which I strongly encourage you to read even if the internet seems fine to you, is the best description I have yet found of the way being on the internet has become unpleasant to me personally. (It won't necessarily help you understand what I mean; I just don't have anything better to point you to.)
² (Though some of you will have noticed that I am getting a lot pickier about which blog comments I approve, in ways which probably feel arbitrary and ridiculous to you but make sense to me. Though they are actually probably just arbitrary and ridiculous. But perhaps adding an element of gambling to blog commenting will make it more exciting?)
³ (assuming you ever look at the archives anyway, which I doubt)
⁴ Oh, and -- if you have a houseplant blog and you know that I've looked at it in the last two or three years, you shouldn't feel offended that I've declined to endorse it. Choose whichever option makes you feel better:
A. Mr. Subjunctive looked at my blog and then forgot about it; he's declining to endorse other blogs, not mine. Probably blocked it from his mind because he was jealous of my brilliance.
B. I don't give a fuck about whether my blog meets Mr. Subjunctive's criteria for being a good houseplant blog, because it's mine, and the only person who has to be happy with it is me. Which I am.

Anthurium no. 1715 "Tyler Linoleum"

So now I'm faced with a sort of problem. It's a completely optional problem, but it's still a problem.

The thing is that there's a completely unreasonable number of unblogged Anthurium seedlings,¹ and most of them are not interesting on their own, at all. I could possibly make them interesting by talking about some other, barely related thing and ignoring the seedlings entirely, but that's kind of exhausting to do, particularly if I have to do it dozens of times.

So the plan is to write about the five or six most interesting ones,² and see how I feel about the others once I'm finished. This will probably take a while, because having a new computer means I can have new games, and playing video games is a lot more fun than blogging about Anthuriums, even interesting Anthuriums.³ But we'll see how things shake out.

In the meantime, right at the moment, we have Anthurium seedling 1715, which is simultaneously one of the weirder, prettier, and more information-rich seedlings in a very long time.

"Pretty" may or may not be obvious from the photo, but Tyler is consistently right on the line between red and orange, which I don't think I've ever seen before. Previously, they've always fallen pretty solidly on one side or another; the in-between color is really striking in person. There's also some green on the back of the spathes, like we've seen with 0330 Faye Quinette (who I suspect of being the pollen parent), which is unusual enough to qualify for "weird."

"Information-rich" comes from the foliage. You may remember that there's been a long-standing puzzle about seedling 0115 ("Erlene Adopter") and her clones (0580 Marsha Marsha Marsha, 0581 Adam All, 0586 Vera Special). All four of them, and none of the other 1500+ seedlings, will periodically and for no obvious reason go yellow at the veins, usually along the minor veins rather than the midrib or other larger veins. Sometimes it's only a couple spots, sometimes it's the whole leaf. It looks like this when it happens:

If I only had one Anthurium and it was doing this, I would assume a nutrient deficiency of some kind, but since I have lots, which are all in the same soil, all getting the same fertilizer at the same strength, etc., and only the ones that are clones of this particular seedling do it, I was thinking maybe it's genetic, or a virus or other disease which the original plant had, so all its clones did too.⁴

The virus theory's looking less likely now. I have thrips around, and thrips can transmit viruses, so if it were a virus, I should have seen this happen to other seedlings. But it's still only ever been the Erlenes.

And so now we have Tyler, whose seed parent was 0580 Marsha Marsha Marsha, and look at his leaves. Mostly they're fine:

 

And they don't get gradually worse over time, as far as I can tell. The yellowing happens,

and then it stays. Doesn't reverse itself, doesn't get worse. The below photo is the same leaf, about a month after the above photo:⁵

I mean, that might look a little worse because of differences in how the photos were taken -- the latter was more strongly backlit than the former -- but if you look, the spots haven't gotten bigger, and except for a couple along the leaf margin at the top left, which possibly just didn't show in the first photo because of reflection off the leaf surface, there aren't any new spots, either.

Occasionally the colors are much more dramatic.

So now the situation is that all the clones of one plant, plus the offspring of one of those clones, does this. Which looks like support for the genetic theory, though the only other surviving seedling from the Erlenes (1727 Mercedes Sulay) has normal green leaves that stay green. And also I don't think any of the Erlenes ever produced a leaf that looked like the one in that last photo: that's pretty extreme.

Tyler would have been a keeper regardless, for the bloom color and suckering, but as the Erlenes are pretty robust plants in general,⁶ and I'm interested in whether the leaf weirdness will be passed to a third generation, it's really really a keeper. I doubt it has any commercial value: even if it's not sick in some fashion, it looks sick, which surely wouldn't sell terribly well. But I want it around at least until I understand it.

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¹ "Unreasonable" = 35.
² Definitely 1332 Alexis Gabrielle Sherrington; probably 1409 Ramona West and 1733 Jayyvon Monroe; possibly 0650 Phyllis Deen, 1438 Johnny Cockette, 1716 Tess LeCoil, 1718 Charo Beans DeBarge, and 1767 Constance Waring, depending on whether they still seem interesting to me later.
³ Dishonored 2 is incredible. There could be even more incredible games, I suppose, but my gaming tastes are very specific (single-player; realistic graphics or at least not blocky, pixelated graphics; interesting art; for shooters, I like stealth/nonlethal play as an option, if not the whole point of the game; multiple routes to the same end goal; high replayability), and Dishonored 2 sits exactly in the center of, like, all of them.
I've also recently gotten Prey, Thief (2014), Assassin's Creed, and Cities: Skylines, each of which fits my criteria at least a little bit, so I'm going to have something to entertain myself with between rounds of watering for a very long time. Though apparently the first Assassin's Creed is not great and I was supposed to have started with Assassin's Creed 2. I didn't know.
⁴ Also, for what it's worth, I have tried adding magnesium to the fertilizer, in the form of Epsom salt (MgSO₄), and that had no effect. I don't have element-specific sources of other nutrients to try to add, but the fertilizer I use does contain most of the trace elements plants need: boron, iron, copper, manganese, etc.
⁵ (31 October 2017 vs. 29 November 2017, for the record.)
⁶ (with the exception of the ghost mites, to which they seem more susceptible than average)

Explanation

Intended to be posting Anthurium photos by now, but I got sick, then my computer monitor died and had to be replaced, then I got sick with something else that was worse than the first thing, then the computer's power supply blew up and the computer was dead and had to be replaced, and so on. So posts are coming, but I'm going to have to get my life back to normal first; it's unclear how long that will take.

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.)

It's been almost a month

and I haven't written a new post yet. Sorry. Still here, still intending to blog.

I do at least have name finalists chosen for a lot of the Schlumbergera seedlings, so once I start again, I should be able to rip through those pretty quickly. Not sure what to do with the Anthuriums; with a few exceptions, the blooms are mostly repeating themselves, which is a problem, and the second problem is that I'm feeling a little weird about the drag queen names ever since the 1592 Maliena B Itchcock post. Not sure how to deal with that; haven't even exactly been able to articulate to myself what I'm uncomfortable about.

So: Schlumbergera posts soon, Anthurium posts maybe sometime. Sorry.

Question for the Hive Mind, Dynasty Edition

A few weeks back, the husband and I started watching the original Dynasty¹ on Amazon. I don't remember wanting to watch it when it originally ran, but it wouldn't have mattered if I had, because I was a child and it was forbidden. I was nevertheless very aware of the show, because it was a big deal (Dynasty was the top-rated show across all networks in the 1984-85 season, and in the top ten for three other seasons). Without ever watching it, I would have been able to tell you that there were characters named Alexis and Krystle, and they fought with one another a lot, and that the show was sort of generally glamorous and soapy. It seemed like people took it sort of seriously -- I remember reading stuff about it being trashy and shallow, and yet also collected a lot of nominations and awards, so clearly people thought it was "good" TV for the time.

So watching it now has been really eye-opening in ways it couldn't have been if I'd watched it then, because it is terrible. Like, astoundingly so. I won't deny that it's entertaining (the outfits alone, my god), but the writing is frequently nonsensical. Like, characters who start at come on, unlock the door, we can't settle our problems if you won't even talk to me will, 15 seconds later, find themselves at fine, I hope you rot in your locked room, with no attempt on the part of the actor or writer to show any kind of thought process bridging the two. Just boom, 180-degree turn. Dynasty seems to be a TV show written by people whose only knowledge of humans is from watching other TV shows. It's amazing.

Also, a lot of the technical stuff is remarkably amateurish. Like, I don't remember which episode it was in, but twice now, I've caught the microphone boom dipping into the top of the frame and they used the shot anyway. There are occasionally shots of jewelry to which crude animated sparkles have obviously been added, and periodically the film quality gets abruptly worse for a single scene, presumably because a shot had to be redone with a different camera(?). "Romantic" scenes are designated as such by the addition of a filter that makes every point of light into an "x," as in this example:

State of the art at the time, I'm sure. But it hasn't aged well.

However! There are some moments that make it all worthwhile, which are highly recommended to any readers who want to watch on Amazon.

For the first big Alexis-Krystle catfight, check out season 2, episode 16, at 41:25.²

Joan Collins "singing"³ and dancing in leather pants: season 4, episode 15, beginning at about 28:30.

Have you ever wanted to see Linda Evans and Joan Collins fighting in a lily pond?⁴ Season 3, episode 23, beginning at 27:05.

To see the most hilariously awful sex scene I've ever seen (and be warned: it is really, really bad; I'm not exaggerating "most awful"), go to season 2, episode 22, at 43:36. There's a shorter version on YouTube, but watch the long version if you can, because part of what makes it so wonderful / terrible is that it goes until you're like okay, I get it, sexy sexy, let's move on and then it keeps going, and going, and going.

My younger siblings, when shown the sex scene, compared it to watching a box turtle eating a strawberry,


which is so precisely correct that it delights me each time I think about it, and cannot be unseen once seen.

And finally, how about a dull cameo from former president Gerald Ford and his wife Betty for no reason at all? (Season 4, episode 11, 25:51. Stick around until 29:55 and you'll get a bonus Henry Kissinger.⁵)

Anyway. So I wouldn't exactly say I'm enjoying Dynasty, but I'm not not enjoying it either. Nothing will convince you that the past is truly another country like watching their television programs will. Dynasty's treatment of Steven Carrington (only like the second gay main-cast character in U.S. television ever, I think I read somewhere) isn't up to modern standards, but it's pretty progressive for the early 80s. (On the other hand, he's only gay part of the time, and it was apparently acceptable to use a certain anti-gay slur in prime-time TV in 1981,⁶ which shocked me a bit.)

Another thing that would never fly today is the amount of fur being worn by the characters (mostly Alexis). I wasn't even looking very hard, and still managed to find these examples within like ten minutes:

More than anything else, though, I notice that the treatment of women is astoundingly bad by modern standards. Not just rape -- though Dynasty is in fact super-rapey⁷ -- but if you took a drink every time a male character grabbed a female character roughly by the arm, to stop her from going somewhere, force her to go somewhere, or demonstrate his manly man-ness, you would literally die of alcohol poisoning somewhere in the early to middle first season. It's alarming. I don't think Krystle changes rooms without male assistance once in the entire first season. Depending on how much of an optimist you are, this can be depressing or heartening; I choose to think of it as heartening. Sure, things aren't so great for women now, but they used to be so much worse that you could show characters doing this kind of shit on the most-watched TV program at the time and not have to worry about the audience losing sympathy for the grabbers and rapists. Change does happen sometimes.

ANYWAY.

The reason we are actually here, though, is plant-related. I am occasionally surprised by the plant choices the set decorators make,⁸ but I can at least usually determine what they are. And yet there are two I can't identify.

The first is obviously enough a bromeliad of some kind, but I can't even narrow down a genus for it. Closest thing I can think of would be a Guzmania, but it's awfully big for a Guzmania. Maybe they were bigger in the 80s?

UPDATE: Anonymous in the comments suggests Guzmania wittmackii. I'm not 100% certain on the species, but a Guzmania of some kind seems likely. See comments for links to photos.

The second plant has been driving me crazy for weeks, because the set decorator really likes them, and sticks them all over the place, but I can't figure out what it is; it reminds me variously of Schefflera actinophylla (compound leaves with large leaflets), Polyscias balfouriana and P. scutellaria (large leaves, produced from cane cuttings), and Ficus spp. (leaf venation, bark color) but doesn't seem to be any of them for sure. The bark is wrong for Schefflera; compound leaves are wrong for Ficus, it doesn't look like any Polyscias I've ever seen.

It's possible that the reason I'm finding it so difficult is that they're not all the same species of plant. The overall "tuft of large compound leaves at the top of a long, bare stem" appearance is consistent from specimen to specimen, but there are differences in leaflet angles and coloration that makes me unsure. In particular, I'm not sure if the two plants in this shot are of the same species:

Adam Carrington (played by Gordon Thomson), left, with Tracy Kendall (Deborah Adair). They're both more or less evil.

The guy here is Mark Jennings (played by Geoffrey Scott); he's the most pointless character and I hate every scene he appears in.

80s fashion!

Joan Collins, enjoying a morning half-grapefruit, as all Dynasty characters were apparently legally required to; it's rare when a breakfast scene shows them eating anything else.

I don't hate her outfit, though. I would totally wear something like that for all my personal grapefruit-eating scenes, if I ever ate grapefruit.

UPDATE: Pattock points out in the comments that it's actually a papaya, not a grapefruit. I don't like papayas, so I would not be willing to eat papaya while wearing Joan Collins' outfit. PATSP regrets the error.

More Adam and Tracy.

So what do we think? Any guesses on either plant ID? Thoughts on Dynasty? Anything?

UPDATE: David Gray, in comments, proposed Bombax, which after a lot of looking around in search engines got me to Pseudobombax ellipticum, a few photos of which look enough like the plants in question that I'm prepared to consider the plant definitely ID'ed. See comments for links to photos.

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¹ There is also a . . . severely unnecessary-sounding reboot on the CW, which I have not seen, and cannot imagine ever wanting to see. 1981 Dynasty or nothing. Accept no substitutes.
² This is especially delicious because while I'm not 100% certain, I think that for some of the fighting, Joan Collins' stunt double is a man on whom the producers have put a wig, a dress, nail polish, and maybe a little makeup. It doesn't show up well in screencaps, unfortunately, but:

If true, the likely real reason is that they were having difficulty finding a stuntwoman of Joan Collins' proportions, but I prefer the magical realist interpretation, that Alexis is so enraged that she physically transforms, à la the Incredible Hulk.
³ More "talking in a lilting way," really, though apparently Collins actually can sing: she just wasn't doing it for this particular performance.
⁴ (heck yeah, you have)
⁵ (Of course Alexis Carrington would know Henry Kissinger socially.)
⁶ Yep, it's the one you're thinking of. The really bad one.
⁷ Blake, Jeff, Mark, and Adam all either commit or attempt rape at some point, and all four of them are intended to be sympathetic characters at least some of the time. I'm probably forgetting some, too. Dex, maybe? Nick Toscanni?
⁸ Here's what was hot, plant-wise, in the 1980s, as best as I can determine from watching all of two shows (I'm also including data from our hernia-surgery-driven re-watch of Star Trek: The Next Generation), in order of increasing surprise (to me) when it showed up on screen:
• Epipremnum aureum (pothos)
• Syngonium podophyllum (arrowhead vine), though I think some of them were artificial so maybe it doesn't count?
• The presence of palms wasn't a surprise, but the number of them were. I'm not good at palm IDs, so the only one I'm sure about is Caryota mitis (fishtail palm). I feel like I've noticed Caryota being more popular on recent TV as well, which is interesting if it's true: I've never had great experiences with them personally.
• Strelitzia nicolai (white bird of paradise)
• Dracaena marginata, Dracaena deremensis 'Janet Craig,' Dracaena fragrans 'Massangeana'
• Hedera helix (English ivy)
• Schefflera actinophylla (umbrella tree)
• Spathiphyllum cvv. (peace lily), though mostly only the big cultivars, and not nearly as often as I expected
• Codiaeum variegatum (croton)
• Ficus benjamina (weeping fig)
• Dieffenbachia cvv. (dumb cane)
• Yucca guatemalensis (spineless yucca)
• Monstera deliciosa (split-leaf philodendron)
• Aechmea fasciata (silver vase plant) and bromeliads in general
• There was actually a plot line involving African violets, starting in the middle of season 4, though the way the show dealt with them, I suspect the writers didn't know that African violets (Saintpaulia cvv.) and violets (Viola spp.) are different, so I'm not sure this one should count either.
• Maranta leuconeura erythroneura (prayer plant)
• Pachira aquatica (money tree)
• Araucaria heterophylla (Norfolk Island pine)
• Fittonia albivenis (nerve plant)
• orchids in general, but mostly genera that aren't Phalaenopsis (in particular lots of Cymbidium)
• Philodendron erubescens 'Red Emerald' and the occasional self-heading Philodendron
• Cissus rhombifolia (grape ivy)
• large columnar cacti (e.g. Cereus peruvianus) and Euphorbias (e.g. E. ingens, E. trigona); presumably this is part of the 1980s southwestern obsession even though neither of these are native to the U.S. southwest
• Pachypodium spp. (Madagascar palm), in both Dynasty and ST:TNG
• Gynura aurantiaca (purple passion plant)
• Dynasty had a few Chamaedorea metallica, which surprised hell out of me, because I would definitely have remembered it if I'd seen any in stores or books at the time, and yet I'm positive I didn't encounter the species until the late 2000s.

Plants I expected to see a lot, based on my memories of the 1980s, and either didn't see at all or saw only very occasionally:
• Ficus lyrata (fiddle-leaf fig) and Ficus elastica (rubber plant)
• Crassula ovata (jade plant)
• Anthurium andreanum hybrids (there are some, but almost always as cut flowers, rather than entire plants)
• Strelitzia reginae (orange bird of paradise) (again, always as cut flowers)
• Chlorophytum comosum (spider plant, airplane plant, mala madre)
• Aglaonema cvv. (Chinese evergreen) (though there were a few)
• Tradescantia zebrina (wandering Jew)
• Asparagus cvv. (asparagus fern) (though Dynasty has a few in exterior shots, and there is an A. plumosus in an interior shot early in season 5)
• Sansevieria trifasciata (snake plant) (there are a couple in Dynasty, just not many; Star Trek: TNG has several)
• Philodendron bipinnatifidum (split-leaf philodendron) (though Dynasty has some in outdoor landscaping shots because they filmed in California, where P. bipinnatifidum can grow outdoors, instead of Denver, where they cannot, even though the story is supposedly set in Denver)
• Cordyline fruticosa (ti plant)
• cane Begonia cvv.

Clivia seeds available

A reader has sent me a batch of Clivia seeds, more than I can realistically grow out.¹ She also provided instructions for their germination that got me 91% germination, and 88% post-transplant survival.² If you're in the U.S. and have always wanted to try growing Clivias from seed, this is your chance to try it out.

How many seeds you get will depend on how many other people want them (and how many you want to get). If a lot of people are interested, I may have to ask you to cover the cost of postage, but if it's just 1 or 2 readers wanting them, I don't mind mailing them out for free.

Contact me by e-mail (mrsubjunactive@outalook.com, minus the two a's) if interested to get the addresses / quantities / money straightened out. I don't know how long they'll remain viable, and I was hoping to mail them out on Monday or Tuesday (1 or 2 May), so sooner is better than later.

Also if you have cats, you may want to pass. Clivia are toxic to cats. It sounds like fatalities are rare, but I wouldn't be comfortable taking the risk, personally. Clivia are also toxic to dogs, though I didn't find out how toxic until, like, today, and since Sheba's never shown any interest in the Clivias I assume she's not going to suddenly develop any. Decide for yourself how much of a gamble you want to take, but I figured I should say something.

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¹ Because I got a big batch of seeds in February already. I'm good for Clivias for the foreseeable future.
² About half of the first batch, as of 22 April (sown 7 February, so they're about 10 weeks old in the photo):

You were probably expecting to see the germination instructions down here. Sorry. I'll try to get a blog post up about this soonish.

Music videos: Shearwater "Quiet Americans," Tricky "Makes Me Wanna Die"

I heard "Quiet Americans" on Welcome to Night Vale (the "weather" for episode 99) a few weeks ago and was immediately obsessed with it. This happens to me every once in a while with music, but it's so rare that it always kind of surprises me.¹

So I've been listening to it over and over and over on YouTube² since, and chanced on a second song that I think pairs nicely with it,³ so here they are together. Maybe you'll like them, maybe you won't. Should maybe warn you that neither are exactly uplifting, go-out-there-and-kick-some-ass sorts of songs, though if you know me at all you wouldn't have been expecting that anyway.

I can't help it
If all the world is ending
If all the life is gone
While you're calling out this name

Where are the Americans?

Your dimmed conscience
Your hands and eyes that wander
Stumbling down the road
Or collapsing on parade

Or lying alone in the eastern light
Sleeping in the morning hours
The only sound
From the lantern-covered hills
The only light
From the day yet to begin
The only sign
Of the guns in silhouette
The only sound
The only light
Only, only

Our dull silence
Our disconnected lives
Pull out the lightning dust
At the mention of his name

Whither the Americans?

Shake the memories off
Hide the evidence under
Piss on the world below
Like a dog that knows his name

Where are the Americans?

All calling on their own tonight
Filling the remaining hours
The only sounds
Are the bells up on the hill
The only lights
Are the lanterns in the wind
The only sign
Skims the rust off of the rails
The only sound
The only light
Only, only

The only light
Is the day yet to begin
The only signs
Are the lives in silhouette
The only sound
Is the rushing of the wind
The only life
Is not the only life
Only, only
Only, only



She makes me wanna die
Follow where Mary goes
(And) cherish the things she knows
Says if I change my stride
Then I'll fly
She makes me wanna die

And change my stride
Then I'll fly

Look to the sun
See me in psychic pollution
Walking on the moon
And how could you dare?
Who do you think you are?
You're insignificant, a small piece, a(n) ism⁴
No more notice
You try to learn the universe
(And) can't even converse in universe⁵
You know it's ironic
Smoking hydroponic
She makes me wanna die

And change my stride
Then I'll fly

She makes me wanna die
Follow where Mary goes
(And) cherish the things she knows
Says if I change my stride
Then I'll fly

And change my stride
Then I'll fly

Look to the sun
See me in psychic pollution
(And) walking on the moon
(And) how could you dare?
Who do you think you are?
You're insignificant, a small piece, a(n) ism
No more notice
You try to learn the universe
(And) can't even converse in universe⁵
You know

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¹ On the off chance that you might be looking for something to think about besides what everyone else is thinking about today, I've collected a group of YouTube links for your listening enjoyment. I don't guarantee that they'll necessarily make your day any better, but the Soweto Gospel Choir and "Electric Lady" are at least really damned likely to help. Those feeling fragile of mood may also appreciate "Det Snurrar I Min Skalle," "Freedom 90," Bad Lip Reading, and Rich White Ladies.
As music I really really like tends to show up on the blog one way or another, you may remember seeing some of these here before:

• Lady Gaga "Bad Romance"
• Siouxie and the Banshees "Kiss Them For Me"
• Dolly Parton "Hard Candy Christmas"
• Lorde "Tennis Court" / "Royals"
• Vienna Teng "Hymn of Acxiom"
• Familjen "Det Snurrar I Min Skalle"
• DJ Tripp "Run This Firefly" (mashup)
• Pet Shop Boys "What Have I Done To Deserve This?"
• Goldfrapp "A&E"
• Bad Lip Reading "Russian Unicorn" and "(Rockin') All Night Long"
• George Michael "Freedom 90"
• Rich White Ladies "No Bad Vibez" / "Wimbledon" / "White Powder Perm"

And in the last couple months, prior to discovering Shearwater, I've been listening to these a lot:
• Tori Amos "Sweet the Sting"
• The Smiths "How Soon Is Now?"
• Sinead O'Connor "Fire on Babylon" / "Daddy I'm Fine"
• B-52s "Roam" (the video's a little yeesh, though)
• Dixie Chicks "Not Ready To Make Nice" / "Goodbye Earl"
• Luscious Jackson "Naked Eye"
• Chvrches "Bury It" ft. Hayley Williams
• the whole video for the Soweto Gospel Choir NPR Tiny Desk Concert
• Tori Amos cover of "Rattlesnakes" (originally Lloyd Cole and the Commotions) and "Time" (originally Tom Waits)
• Radiohead "Burn The Witch" / "Let Down"
• Amy Grant "What About the Love"
• Dan Wright cover of "Hide and Seek" (originally Imogen Heap)
• Mike Masse and Jeff Hall cover of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" (originally Elton John) and "Africa" (originally Toto)
• Depeche Mode "Home" / "Shake the Disease"
• Miranda Lambert "Mama's Broken Heart"
• Gusgus "Within You"
• Janelle Monae "Electric Lady" / "Q.U.E.E.N." ft. Erykah Badu / "Sincerely, Jane"
• Tricky "Christiansands"
• Clams Casino "I'm God"
• Mike Morasky, Portal 2 soundtrack "I Made It All Up"
² Pending actual purchase of the album on a physical CD, which I do because I am uncool. This has to be a 2-album purchase, done through the Barnes & Noble website, though, and I am having a terrible time coming up with a second album to buy with it. Throw some suggestions back at me if you feel like it.
³ Not necessarily in the sense of having anything to do with it musically or thematically. I just like the way the one sounds after the other.
⁴ (I always heard "that is of," but some lyrics sites have it as "an ism," and I admit that it sure does sound like that's what she's saying even if my version makes more sense in context of the following line.)
⁵ (Some lyrics sites record it as "human verse" the first time and "universe" the second, but I'd always heard it as "universe" both times, and I think I still do.)

Anthurium no. 0589 "Hetty King"

Just in case you were under the impression that drag kings were a new thing, Hetty King (born Winifred Emms) was performing as a male impersonator before World War I. She even got decently famous at it, along with several other male impersonators from around that time (two of the bigger names being Vesta Tilley and Ella Shields). I mean, male impersonation then didn't mean quite the same thing that drag kings do now, obviously, but it's clearly in the same neighborhood, and I don't get the impression that it was considered particularly shocking and immoral. At least no more shocking and immoral than the music halls they would have been performing in, anyway.

Shamefully, I didn't do as much research into King as I probably should have if I'm going to talk about her.¹ But there's a nice long article/interview with King here, and YouTube has some relevant videos as well.

Hetty King's seedling namesake is, alas, much less interesting. She's yet another in a long line of LPAs,²

and although the foliage is pretty nice,

the only notable thing about her, really, is that she produced a second bud really quickly. Lots of pent-up blooming energy, perhaps: she was 39 months old before making a first bloom.³ The overall plant is fine,

but the spathe flipped backward after opening, and I have plenty of pink/pink Anthuriums already. Hetty's not so terrible that I need to go out of my way to discard her, but she's not so good that I'm going to feel bad when I eventually do.

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¹ What with watering, trying to blog every day, Anthurium-taping, e-mail, trying to sell plants on Craigslist, trying to make sure Sheba takes her Benadryl every morning, getting pictures of the plants and sorting through them, and physical therapy exercises, I've been perpetually exhausted.
Notes and explanations:
• trying to sell plants on Craigslist hasn't actually resulted in any sales yet. It almost never does. Craigslist is the worst. Sadly, it's also the only. So I keep trying.
• Sheba's been chewing holes in her fur, especially the fur on her feet. We think this is probably an allergy (it's happened in other years; also my allergies have been acting up intermittently during the same period), and giving her Benadryl twice a day, and spraying her feet with a lidocaine-based spray, seem to keep it under control better than anything else we've tried, but she doesn't actually like the Benadryl or the spray, so it's a little bit of a hassle to administer them, and they aren't able to stop her from doing it altogether, just enough to keep her from chewing actual wounds into her skin.
• I have been having trouble with my right shoulder, off and on, since the spring, which got bad enough that I saw a doctor about it a month ago. Got a referral to a physical therapist, who I like and who I believe knows what she's talking about, but she gave me exercises and stretches to do twice a day, which was tough to fit into my schedule but I (mostly) kept up with.
Then at the follow-up appointment, it turned out that I had been doing the exercises mostly wrong, partly because I was finding it so difficult to fit them into my day that I was trying to rush through them, taking shortcuts, etc. My shoulder got somewhat better anyway, but an elbow started hurting instead, so the only thing I accomplished was moving the pain from one joint to another.
And then the physical therapist, at the follow-up, assigned me a set of new exercises that take just as long to do as the old exercises did, plus I'm supposed to continue the old exercises. The one time I attempted to do all six things, I was trying to work out before watering plants, so I was in a hurry, and even though the correct way to do the exercises had been clarified for me at the follow-up, I was doing doing them all wrong anyway, and could tell I was doing them all wrong, but got frustrated with myself for not being able to do them right, and the whole situation was miserable. So, as I write this (26 October), I've more or less decided that I prefer the shoulder pain to the exercises, and I've stopped doing them entirely, which is obviously not a mature or productive reaction to the situation and will certainly not make anything better. But so my point is that time I might have spent researching early-20th-century male impersonators has been going toward hurting myself with poorly-performed exercises instead. For which I am doubly sorry.
² (= Little Pink Anthuriums)
³ The average length of time from sow date to first bud continues to increase, as some of the earliest seedlings get around to making buds, but it's still around the two-year mark. The mean is 28.5 months, and the median is 27.2 months. 39 months is really late, though the record at the moment for the latest bud belongs to 0045 "Lineysha Sparx," who finally produced a bud, after 47 months, and then dropped it.

Milestone: 100th Bloomed Anthurium

The photo should speak for itself, I think (right-click to view larger image):¹

1st (leftmost) column, top to bottom: 0279 "Tristan Shout," 0085 "Carson Trucks," 0259 "Tasha Salad," 0231 "Rhea Listick," 0200 "Mario Speedwagon," 0234 "Ross Koz," 0035 "Alyssa Edwards," 0046 "Aurora Boreanaz," 0243 "Sal Monella," 0247 "Selma Carr"
2nd column: 0594 "Charity Case," 0066 "Barbara Seville," 0241 "Megan Gigaterra," 0386 "Violet Chachki," 0565 "MysterE," 0346 "Lois Carmen DiNominatre," 0206 "Marcia Dimes," 0058 "Betty Larsony," 0357 "Rhea Litré," 0236 "Roxanne Debree"
3rd column: 0555 "Mystique Summers Madison," 0351 "Pat McCooter," 0344 "Formica Dinette," 0202 "Mason Pepperspray," 0216 "Gillian Jamm," 0112 "Dottie A. Rebel," 0213 "Nadya Falt," 0088 "Charlotte F. Babylon," 0116 "Eileen Dover," 0282 "Dave Trading"
4th column: 0271 "Wanda Reulthemal," 0597 "Raven," 0276 "Zach Religious," 0232 "Rhoda Badcek," 0273 "Wes Coast," 0132 "Eve Stropper," 0125 "Anya Wei," 0257 "Summer Bederth-Enuthers," 0144 "Graham Reaper," 0280 "Jujubee"
5th column: 0235 "Rowan DeBoate," 0281 "Laganja Estranja," 0237 "Roxy Casbah," 0220 "Nora Morse," 0239 "Russ Teanale," 0371 "Deb Autry," 0179 "Katie Boundary," 0110 "Delta Badhand," 0238 "Rudy Day," 0149 "Heather Boah"
6th column: 0275 "Yvette Horizon," 0288 "Cookie Buffet," 0255 "Steph N. Wolfe," 0558 "Amber Waves," 0040 "Ivy Winters," 0108 "Deena Sequins," 0564 "Shannel," 0223 "Patty Cake," 0365 "Murray Hill," 0245 "Sawyer Ad"
7th column: 0126 "Erin Dirtylondry," 0218 "Noah Fence," 0283 "Anne Pursand," 0415 "Darby Dragons," 0059 "Bijoux Tuit," 0076 "Bob Humbug," 0335 "Donna Fanuday," 0264 "Trey Lerpark," 0212 "Rogue," 0063 "Audrey Quest"
8th column: 0083 "Carmen Adairya," 0214 "Anita Knapp," 0267 "Natalie Attired," 0244 "Sara Problem," 0586 "Vera Special," 0334 "Jean Poole," 0203 "Anna Mae Hemensouz," 0205 "Venus D-Lite," 0034 "Alaska Thunderfuck," 0560 "Jill O'Schottz"
9th column: 0556 "Frank Lee Grande," 0041 "Anna Graham," 0416 "Holy McGrail," 0373 "Shangela Laquifa Wadley," 0031 "Sylvester," 0580 "Marsha Marsha Marsha," 0329 "Gladys Panzarov," 0290 "RuPaul Charles," 0360 "Heidi Gosique," 0171 "Genevieve la Difference"
10th column: 0215 "Nathan Ofithlam," 0097 "Colin Ambulance," 0328 "Polly Esther Blend," 0118 "Elijah Sturdabowtit," 0330 "Faye Quinette," 0120 "Eliza Boutisecksis," 0002 "Alexis Mateo," 0005 "Chad Michaels," 0338 "Anne Fibian," 0026 "Peaches Christ"
In case it didn't speak for itself enough for you:

0212 "Rogue," in the post from Friday, was the 100th of my Anthurium seedlings to bud and produce a full bloom, which happened about a month ago. I then spent like a week and a half trying to create the above composite image for this post, which I know it doesn't look like a week and a half of effort but getting the colors to shade into one another, even this imperfectly, was a difficult problem to solve.

There are 8 new first-time blooms since I put the picture together a month ago, who you'll be meeting in October, and I'm watching another 13 buds that may or may not ever open. For a while this summer, I was seeing a new first bud every two days on average, which I'm pretty sure has never happened before.

So this post and image isn't the end of anything; the posts will keep coming. I'm just taking a moment to say, hey, wow, 100 blooms is kind of a big deal, and here's what four years of Anthurium breeding can get you.

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¹ Which is still not as big as the original 61.5 mexapixel version of the image. I didn't even try uploading the original file.

Anthurium no. 0365 "Murray Hill"

Murray Hill is one of the world's better-known drag kings.¹ Which isn't saying a lot -- drag kings haven't gotten nearly the same amount of attention that drag queens have -- but still. I don't know exactly why drag kings haven't yet become A Thing, but I have theories:

• It's possible that it's more technically difficult to fake stereotypical male features like big muscles and facial hair (especially facial hair) than it is to fake breasts and put on a wig. Though I suppose shoulder pads, at least, are easy enough.
• Maybe women, as a group, just aren't that interested in doing drag. (Though that doesn't really explain anything: if they're not interested, why are they not interested?)
• Maybe sexist club owners are less inclined to book drag kings than drag queens, so it's harder to find an audience, and budding drag kings give up. Or, conversely, maybe club owners are perfectly happy to book drag kings, but there's no audience interested in watching them. (This article explains the situation thus: "Straight women find [male drag] threatening because it’s like, Does this mean I’m a lesbian if I think this guy’s cute? Straight men find it threatening because, after all, that’s supposed to be their domain. And lesbians find it threatening because it seems like this is the stereotype of what a lesbian is — a women who wants to be a man.")
• The husband suggested that maybe it's a matter of exaggeration -- drag queens aren't just dressing up as women, they're dressing up as super-glamorous women, with eye-catching dresses, huge hair, and the outsize personalities to match; exaggerate men too far and you wind up with Ron Swanson. Who is funny, sure, but you can only exaggerate the strong silent type so far before it shades into catatonia. ("Maybe a country music star?" the husband suggested, and I was like, oh, yeah, actually one of the bigger drag kings, Gage Gatlyn, has been doing Tim McGraw for years, that makes sense.) Though there are plenty of male stereotypes besides just strong-silent.
• Maybe the world is just waiting for a breakout star to appear and create an audience for drag kings, like RuPaul did in the early 90s. RuPaul is actually in a good position to make that happen, with her show (RuPaul's Drag Race), there's some support for the idea from previous contestants, and drag kings have auditioned for RPDR; it's just a matter of actually, you know, doing it.
Also, just to underline it: that last link is a video of a woman, pretending to be a man (and, in spots, pretending to be a man who is pretending to be a woman), who is lip-synching to a song perfomed by a man who's famous mostly for pretending to be a woman.
• Maybe I'm out of the loop, being out here in Iowa, and everyone who matters (i.e. the people in large cities on the U.S. coasts) knows about drag kings already.
• I found one really interesting article about drag kings in which a king blamed "shaming from the drag queen community" for stifling a fairly robust late-1990s drag king scene in New York. So maybe it's an internal LGBT problem. A few performers interviewed for that article say that audiences who come for drag queens are usually very bad audiences for drag kings: "audiences at male drag venues are so conditioned to cheer for queens that they sit in baffled silence through even the best king’s performance." Which is interesting. Why would that be?
• All of the above?
• None of the above?

Whatever the reason why kings haven't taken off yet, I feel like the moment is right for a drag king to break into the mainstream within the next decade, and Murray Hill seems like a good candidate.² He's got a definite shtick, not "man" or even "exaggerated man" but "slightly lecherous drunk mid-1960s Rat Pack comedian," and does it well --

-- so, you know, remember the name.

All of the above is to distract you from the fact that I don't have a whole lot to say about the seedling "Murray Hill."³ He's another member of the social science clique: dark red spathes; green spadices that turn white; fairly compact habit; dull, dark green leaves.

He's not doing anything new, and to be honest 0357 "Rhea Litré" and 0360 "Heidi Gosique" are both better, by virtue of having superior foliage.

But Murray is certainly good enough to consider a keeper for now. (There's no rule that I can't have as many dark red / greens as I want.) If I ever get the scale and thrips under control, I might sell him, but that's a hell of an "if."

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¹ Not to be confused with his namesake, the Manhattan neighborhood of Murray Hill. Also, Hill hates to be called a "drag king:" I gather that the problem is that it implies that he's not actually male. He stays in character all the time, apparently.

'It's fascinating to me how Murray keeps up this boozy, B-grade Rat Pack persona 100 percent of the time,' says Earl Dax, who produces the "Direct From NYC" performance series in Philadelphia. 'One time Murray stayed at my apartment. First thing in the morning, there he was, in boxers and a T-shirt. I said, "Good morning," and he said, "Hey, kid! How ya doin?"'

(Ref.)
I assume Murray the human being is aware of being a drag king, but obviously it would be upsetting to Murray the character, and if Murray the human never breaks character, then, well. . . .
² And there has in fact apparently been some interest in developing a Murray Hill TV pilot, though I gather from this article that that's never gone past a sort of wouldn't-it-be-nice hypothetical thing. For what it's worth to any producers who might be reading this: I'd be interested! Do it!
³ I mean, I also think it's interesting stuff to talk about, but I always worry when I stray too far from the topic of plants, because that's all that I know you (the generic / collective "you") like to read about.

Anthurium no. 0351 "Pat McCooter"

When I started assigning drag queen names to the different seedlings, I didn't know how many names I was going to need, or how many drag queens were even out there in the first place. So I told myself that I was going to accept as many possible names as I could, without passing judgment on the possible offensiveness of the name (e.g. "Pat McCooter," hence this preamble), the performer as a person (e.g. Phi Phi O'Hara, who was memorably awful in RuPaul's Drag Race's 4th season), their act (e.g. Sharon Needles, who has occasionally tried so hard to shock or provoke that she's crossed the line into being blatantly racist, which, ugh), or whatever. And mostly I've done that.¹ I've also tried not to investigate any of the real-life queens whose names I'm using, for fear of losing a name option, so you must never, ever, ever assume that getting a seedling named for some real-life queen automatically means that I know or approve of them or their act. As with most large groups of people, some of them are sure to be awful, and a few of them will be saintly, many of them will just be Not Your Kind Of Thing, and most of them will be all three to some degree or another.

This is all my way of noting that yeah, "Pat McCooter" is likely to be offensive or objectionable to some people who read this blog,² and while I'm not necessarily happy if someone is given offense, I made a decision some time ago not to care too much about name offensiveness because I didn't think I could afford to get too picky.

As time's gone on, I've wound up with four separate lists of names. One, the "acceptable" ones which are currently being used, or in the queue to use for future seedlings, is very long (currently: 756 used, 636 queued). Two, a short list of names which would be acceptable except that part of the name names or implies a color, which only works if the plant agrees to bloom in that color, and since I don't know when I assign names what colors seedlings are going to bloom in, color-based names wind up being unusable.^{3, 4} Three, a short list of names which are so distasteful that even though I had previously decided that it was okay to use offensive names, I hesitate to use them anyway.⁵ Four, a long list of names awaiting judgment, most of which will wind up being discarded.⁶

This is all potentially overkill. At the moment, I only have enough room for about 800 seedlings, max, so in theory if I had a list of 800 acceptable names, I could just recycle those over and over. The trouble is that every time I think I've hit maximum capacity, I find ways to squeeze even more plants into the same space. There are no guarantees that I'm going to stay at 800, and odds are good that I'll find ways to keep expanding.

So that is my explanation for why this one is named "Pat McCooter." There is at least one real person who performs under that name, as well.⁷

Which I guess brings us, finally, to the seedling itself.

Pat is one of the seedlings in the mid-300s who have produced pink blooms. Seedling group AW⁸ is about 50-50 red and pink spathes so far, though Pat is the only AW sibling with a slightly orange spadix. Pat reminds me of no. 0276 "Zach Religious" more than any of the other AWs, but then Zach was also a 'White Gemini' seedling. They could easily be full siblings, just sown five months apart.

Pat's bloom photographed well, but the leaves are a little rough,

and the plant as a whole seems to have been struggling with some problem or another. Thrips, probably.

Is Pat a keeper? If forced to guess right now, I'd say probably not, but I'm reserving judgment. Once I've seen how this bloom ages, and seen how long Pat takes to produce a second bloom, I'll be better equipped to make a decision.

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¹ There is one drag performer whose act is so obnoxious to me that I made a deliberate early decision not to name a seedling after her. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to identify them by name here in the footnote, but you're free to guess. I'll confirm if someone guesses correctly.
² If it isn't, rest assured that there's probably one somewhere in the list that is. Unless you're just really hard to offend.
³ Examples: "Billy Black," "Violet Chachki," "Mr. Green Teal."
⁴ I'm toying with the idea of assigning color-based names retroactively for seedlings where I don't like the current name, or where the current name was assigned before I started worrying about color-based names. Like if 0084 "Chocolate Sunrise" blooms in some color other than brown, as it almost surely will, I might assign it a new, more color-appropriate name. I haven't done it so far partly for fear of what this would do to the Anthurium-seedling paperwork, all the spreadsheets and stuff that would need to be changed. The paperwork fear has also kept me from swapping out a few names that strike me as less clever now than they did when they first went on the list. Probably I'll do at least a few name changes, sooner or later. Spreadsheets be damned.
⁵ A surprisingly large number of these are drag king names, for reasons which would probably become clear if I stopped and thought about it for a while. Examples: "Dixon Cider," "Sarahbelle Palsy," "Tatiana Rexia," "Hunter Downe," "Pussy Tourette."
⁶ Some of them are names that I came up with but think may not be clever enough, or drag-queenish enough, to use: "Blanche D'Almonz," "Angel-Bert Humperdink," "Ayleen Versus-Predator," etc.
Some are names that I haven't been able to decide whether they belong in the offensive-names list or not: "Glennda Orgasm," "Amanda Sue Punchfuk." (Though looking at it now, I'm inclined to say Glennda, at least, is okay.)
Some are names used by actual performers that I think may not be clever or memorable enough (a lot of these are also drag king names): "Jackson," "Mick Swagger," "Billy King."
Some are names I'm working on creating but only have half of, i.e., names in progress: "_________ Von Trapp," "Sprinkles _________."
⁷ I have been assuming, maybe incorrectly, that drag queen names tended to be punny in the past because it was dangerous enough to cross-dress without using your actual name, too. As long as you're a performer, and you're going to have to change your name anyway, why not change it to something that gets you a laugh in your introduction? As drag has gotten more popular and accepted, it seems that the names based in wordplay have been dying out in favor of names which advertise a personal relationship (like, it's not unusual for a performer to take the surname of a mentor; Roxxxy Andrews' name honors her drag mother Erica Andrews, for example), or which project a certain over-the-top glamour ("Trinity Kardashian Bonet"). Plus, it's now useful to have a unique name to perform under, for social media, Google searches, personal (ugh) branding, and so forth. But at one time, there were some drag names that, as far as I can tell, didn't belong to anyone in particular. "Anita Mann," "Ida Slapter," that sort of thing. "Pat McCooter" may or may not be one of those. There's definitely a performer in and around Memphis, Tennessee who performs under that name, but it's a common enough joke name that several of the sites that come up in a search don't appear to be related to that particular performer. Clearly, more research is needed.
⁸ (Seed parent: 'White Gemini;' sow date: 16 October 2012)