Pretty picture: Oncidium Space Race 'Coco'

I'm kinda meh about these flowers, but I find the unopened bud in the top left corner kind of interesting.

Space Race is a hybrid of Onc. Sphacetante and Onc. Pupukea Sunset. The former tongue-twisty name is a clumsy mashup of its parents' names, Oncidium sphacelatum and Oncidium Debutante (I would have recommended "Debutatum," if anybody had asked me, but of course nobody ever does.), and I didn't care to track down the ancestry of Debutante, so that is left as an exercise for the reader. Pupukea Sunset is a hybrid of the two species Oncidium fuscatum and Oncidium cheirophorum.

Space Race most strongly resembles O. sphacelatum, which is also yellow with some brown or red-brown spots. I much prefer the looks of O. fuscatum (brown, with a large pink and white labellum) or O. cheirophorum (solid bright yellow), but that's just me.

Random plant event: Spathiphyllum

I want to note, first off, that this does not necessarily mean I'm returning to regular blogging. Very little is going on here, and what is going on is mostly not good, so I'd prefer not to commit myself just yet. However, there is a tiny bit of news, in that I've potted up the Spathiphyllum seedlings from last October/November. (Previously seen on 31 October, 5 December, and 18 December.)

I normally wouldn't have potted these up quite so early, but 1) there was something growing¹ on the surface of the vermiculite, in some of the other sections of the germination container, and I didn't want it to reach the spaths even though I wasn't positive it would hurt them, and 2) they were getting big enough that I was concerned about them shading one another to death like a bunch of drag queens.² Potting them up now (17 January, technically) is a gamble, but it seemed safer than leaving them where they were.

Observations:

Spathiphyllum seedlings grow faster than Anthurium ones do. It's not a huge difference, but there's definitely a difference. It's especially noticeable with the roots: Anthurium seedlings are often content to grow a single thick, short, brittle root and then focus on leaves, often taking four months or more to add a second or third root. Spathiphyllum seedlings produce three to five long, thin, silky-looking, flexible roots pretty much immediately, and apparently never stop adding them.

The sandy-looking stuff in the center is imidacloprid. The best place for these at the moment is in the basement, and the basement is not yet definitively free of scale, therefore the seedlings get dosed just like everything else down there.
Aside from the difference in speed, though, Anthurium and Spathiphyllum have remarkably similar-looking seedlings. The Spathiphyllum leaves are lighter in color, which was unexpected (the one known parent was just your basic medium green, not as dark as peace lilies usually are, but considerably darker than the seedlings), and there are some subtle differences in leaf texture (Spathiphyllum leaves are thinner and more flexible, just like in the mature plants), but I wouldn't be able to tell which was which at a glance.

I can't report anything definite about the germination rate, because I didn't record how many seeds I started in the second batch, from 1 November. The first batch had 8 seeds, of which 6 germinated, and 4 got transplanted. The second batch produced 46 seedlings that were transplanted, from an unknown number of seeds. In addition to those 50, I also threw away 5 seedlings that had germinated but looked too small to bother with.³ So that's 55 viable (?) seedlings from a single inflorescence.

If I were trying to create my own special Spathiphyllum cultivar, I suppose I should have potted the seedlings individually, one to a pot, but since I'm not, and since I expect some of them not to survive transplant, I put most of them three plants to a pot.⁴ If one of them happens to do something really cool, in theory I can rip the other ones out, or get it tissue-cultured, or whatever. But probably none of them will do anything really cool anyway.

The next step in the process, I suppose, is to grow some of the seedlings to blooming size. There's little information available about how long that might take; the one site I found that addressed it at all suggested that they might be mature enough to bloom in two years. So those of you who are following PATSP strictly for Spathiphyllum seedling news should check back in late October 2014, I guess.

-

¹ (or possibly dying)
² For those in the audience who don't know: 1) you should be watching RuPaul's Drag Race, and 2) "throwing shade" is slang for insulting another person, though it's a specific kind of insult-throwing. Like, if you ask Mariah Carey for her feelings about Madonna, and she says, I don't listen to Madonna, that's an insult to Madge, but it's also not really throwing shade. It's too direct, and there's no cleverness to it. On the other hand, if Mariah says I really haven’t paid attention to Madonna since about like 7th or 8th grade when she used to be popular (something Mariah has apparently actually said), that's shade. It's basically a difference of style, I guess? And insult density? The first sentence is just a plain, unadorned insult which is also a statement of fact; the actual Mariah quote contains three insults: I don't listen to Madonna, Madonna's way older than me, nobody else likes Madonna either.
I don't know. I'm probably not the right person to be trying to explain this, since it's not actually a term I use in everyday conversation, but that's the basic idea as I understand it. This is a long way to go to explain something that was a fairly stupid pun in the first place, but you know me: always willing to go the extra thousand words to explain a joke that wasn't particularly funny to begin with.
³ Considering how many seedlings I had, and how I don't even especially like Spathiphyllums in the first place, I felt like I could afford to be choosy. I threw out about 60% of the Schlumbergera seedlings I potted up on the same night, because I had the same problem with them but worse.
⁴ That's maybe not a smart assumption. With the Anthuriums so far, the transplant survival rate has been 286/310, or a hair over 92%, though some of those are still pretty young. It could eventually fall to 85-88%. With the Schlumbergeras and Aglaonemas, I think I'm at 100%; with Columnea orientandina it's in the neighborhood of 20%. So it's tough to predict what will happen to the Spathiphyllums.

Pretty pictures: Vanda Wirat Blue

I couldn't find anything about Wirat Blue at the International Orchid Register, which makes me question if it's a real name or not.


There's a Vanda Wirat, for example, and if you do a Google search for Vanda Wirat, you get a lot of hits for both Wirat Blue and Wirat Pink, neither of which are in the IOR. Could it be that the Wirat cross produced offspring which were blue (or at least "blue," the aspirational name given to certain shades of purple in the horticultural world) and other seedlings which were pink? Or is it more complicated than that? I don't know.


I suppose the important thing is that Vandas are pretty.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum NOID

So. Much. White.


No tag, so:

wrong tags: 9
incomplete tags: 1
missing tags: 14

Imidacloprid has now been added to all the plants in the basement, so the only thing left to do is wait and see if more scale show up. I bought two more pounds of imidacloprid last Wednesday: one pound I opened but only used a tiny bit of, and the other I didn't open at all and could probably return to the store. The question now is whether to be an optimist and return the latter, or be a pessimist and use the nearly two remaining pounds to dose some more plants (maybe everything in the plant room?), on the off chance that that might make anything better.

Actually it's not that much of a question. We already know I'm a pessimist.

Not that I'm telling the plant collection what to do or anything, but remember how last summer when everything was horrible, and then the Epiphyllum and Clivia both bloomed and I was all like okay, I guess I can't stay mad at you, and things got better for a while? This would be a really excellent time for the Eucharis to decide to grow a flower. I'd even accept one of the Begonias, or Aechmea fasciatas. In my wildest dreams, maybe the Brassolaeliocattleya (still, inexplicably, alive) or Selenocereus chrysocardium. I do feel like the collection owes me something for all this.

Pretty (?) pictures: Schoenorchis paniculata

Well, I suppose it's different, at least.




No, the scale situation has not improved. I have so far (as of last night) dumped approximately 2 pounds of imidacloprid granules into about 500 plants' pots. The idea is to do everything in the basement, and leave the scale nowhere to run. This is tedious, exhausting, depressing, and very possibly unhealthy, but it will be worth it if it gets rid of the scale.

If it doesn't, well. Let's just say you wouldn't want to be here when I discover the survivors.

Pretty pictures: Miltoniopsis Echo Bay 'Midnight Tears'

Top 18 PATSP Posts of 2012

2012 wasn't my, the blog's, or the plant collection's best year. I spent basically the entire year saying that I had too many plants,¹ and trying to reduce the collection to a more manageable size, and somehow managed to gain plants anyway (919 at the beginning of 2012, 1029 at the end). And then the scalepocalypse. And then I started having problems with fungus, a problem which is ongoing.² And then the scale came back.³

Also saying these are the top 18 posts is sort of misleading in two different ways: five of them are basically all the same post, so it's closer to the top 14 posts. Also "top" doesn't really mean anything except that I liked how they turned out and think you should see them if you happened to miss them the first time. They're not necessarily the most-viewed or most-commented or anything like that. Anyway.


18. Pretty picture: Cattleya aclandiae (16 April 2012)


I just liked how the photo turned out, basically.


17. Random plant event: Sansevieria cylindrica (4 September 2012)

Well, it was a big deal. You don't even know.


16. Pretty picture: Phragmipedium Peruflora's Cirila Alca (22 November 2012)


Also just a nice photo.


15. Random plant event: Spathiphyllum (5 December 2012)

In which I propagate a plant I don't even really like, at a time when I'm actually trying to reduce the number of plants I have, because I've realized propagation is possible. I still feel all conflicted about this.


14. Pretty picture: Rhyncholaelia digbyana (30 November 2012)


In which I attempt to liven up a dull blog post with an incomplete screenplay.


13. Random plant event: Aglaonema 'Maria,' with special guest star (8 March 2012)


The debut of the peat-bog-in-the-basement idea.


12. Cribplants, yo. (28 November 2012)

In which my thugged-out ass realizes that Snoop Dogg is a mothafuckin genius.


11. Elsewhere on the Web: Did We Win Already? (29 January 2012)

The sellers of the blue dyed orchids said, about a year ago, that they were going to admit on the tags that their plants wouldn't re-bloom blue. I wonder if that actually happened. Somebody should check.


10. Random plant event: Clivia miniata 'Aztec Gold' (22 August 2012)

The rumors are true: Clivias actually can be induced to bloom. I was beginning to doubt.


9. The Very Slow and Occasionally Sticky Inferno (14 August 2012)

The scale outbreak depressed me. And led to all sorts of incidental badness. Which was also depressing. And is continuing to be depressing. And will likely be depressing in the future as well.


8. Pretty pictures: Masdevallia Sunset Jaguar 'Night Breed' (24 April 2012)


I really love this flower, though I'm unable to read the name without thinking about the "night cheese" joke on 30 Rock.⁴


7. Random plant event: Epiphyllum NOID (26 August 2012)

In which an Epiphyllum blooms in Iowa, and a family is brought together. (No, really.) Also there are many pictures.


2 to 6. Missing From Retail series
(Part 1, 25 November) (Part 2, 2 December) (Part 3, 8 December) (Part 4, 14 December) (Part 5, 20 December)

Sort of a weird choice, I guess, but it was nice to expand the horizons of the blog for a bit and talk about a new group of plants. Plus I learned some things about plants I was otherwise unfamiliar with.


1. The Brick Joke (16 January 2012)

And no, Pierson's Flower Shop and Greenhouses, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, never did contact me in response to the post, so I assume I'm still banned from the store. We never have occasion to go to Cedar Rapids anymore anyway (I'm sorry, Frontier! I miss you!), so this hasn't had much practical effect on my life. However, my initial feelings of well they kind of have a point and I understand why they might not want me there have had a year to . . . curdle.

And so now we have 2013. May I have less fungus and scale, fewer plants overall, and the same number of kidneys, next New Year's Day.⁵

-

¹ (Absolutely true, though!)
² The fungus story so far:
First I tried neem oil. That makes leafy Euphorbia and Pedilanthus types defoliate, and doesn't seem to have much lasting effect on the non-leafy stuff.
Then I tried spraying with basic copper sulfate in water, which seemed like the least nasty thing available for fungus control at the ex-job. Not only did that not help much, it clogged the sprayers almost immediately.
Then I asked for help from Cactus Jungle. They said hydrogen peroxide, so I've been doing that, but this doesn't seem to be helping either, especially since I can only do it every 14 days or so. And it makes the Pedilanthus defoliate.
The next thing to try is baking soda. That's not going to work either, but it's another thing I can spray inside the house that won't kill us all, so I'm going to try it anyway.
When baking soda has conclusively failed -- and it will -- only then am I going to allow myself to use an actual hardcore, mid-20th-century-type fungicide. I bought a bottle of chlorothalonil at the ex-job some time ago, then looked it up when I got home and kind of wished I'd bought something else, 'cause I don't want to use it in the house and it's too cold to use it outside.
If the chlorothalonil doesn't fix things -- and it's a polychlorinated benzene ring with two nitrile groups, so it ought to be able to kill everything -- I'm going to go back to the ex-job and buy some captan.
And if captan doesn't work either, I am going to burn the goddamned house down. THE MILDEW WILL NOT WIN.
³ (Truthfully, I'm depressed about all this. Probably going to take a hiatus for a while following today's post. I'd rather not think about plants any more than absolutely necessary right now. Plus, I have a bunch of plants in the basement that I need to dose with imidacloprid granules, and that's going to take some time.)
⁴ It's a throwaway gag where Liz Lemon is home by herself eating cheese. Getting the rights to use the song, even though it wasn't the whole song (or the right lyrics!), apparently cost the 30 Rock producers $40,000. That's some commitment to a joke, that is.
⁵ (For the record, I would also be okay with an increased number of kidneys, at least within reason.)

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum sukhakulii 'Nina' x Paph. Grand Illusions

I approve of this one. Though the tag was mildly incorrect (it said Paph. sukhakuli, not sukhakulii), the name Nina is in there, so it can't be all bad. And it's a pretty minor error, in the overall scheme of things: Google can still find it. So we'll count it as half an error.


wrong tags: 9
incomplete tags: 1
missing tags: 13

Both parents look a lot like this, which is a bit disappointing. (I realize there are reasons for crossing orchids besides their appearances, and that people who are interested in orchid hybridization might well have super-specific goals in mind when they do their crosses. I just enjoy it more when the parents are more distinct, is all.)

Meanwhile, in Scalepocalypse news, after about 6-7 weeks without any new sightings, leading me to think that maybe it might actually be over, I've found scale on Anthurium baby #48 ("Autumn Bahn"). So not only is the scalepocalypse not over, but it's continuing to spread -- the Anthuriums hadn't been affected before this. Goddamn. The really depressing part is that the reason I noticed this was because I was up-potting a set of Anthurium seedlings that had been growing particularly well. So I went from feeling good because some of the Anthuriums had been doing well enough to graduate to bigger pots, to being depressed anew about the scale.

I threw some of the imidacloprid granules into as many of the Anthuriums as I could; the rest will have to wait until I can buy more imidacloprid. Probably I'll end up dosing everything in the basement before all this is over.

It's not like I was expecting 2013 to be a great year for me or anything, but I don't normally get a shot across the bow like this on the very first day of a new year. We're going to have to keep an eye on 2013.

(EDIT: And then I found scale on two of the Alworthia 'Black Gems,' and the Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips.' Then I stopped watering 'cause I didn't want to find any more.)