Pretty picture: Vanda Princess Mikasa

Google tells me that Princess Mikasa can also be hot pink, though I've never seen that personally.

Previously (as Ascocenda Princess Mikasa): 2013

Vanda Princess Mikasa = Vanda Royal Sapphire x Vanda coerulea (Ref.)

Pretty pictures: Masdevallia Southern Sun

Still nothing new happening here with the plants, aside from the Anthuriums. I'm positive you don't want to hear as much about the Anthuriums as I want to tell you (it's a little much even for me sometimes), so the blog may be quiet for a while, aside from orchid pictures and the occasional massive Anthurium update.

Today we have a Masdevallia. Not the best Masdevallia flower at the show, but the plant looked pretty good.

Masdevallia Southern Sun = Masdevallia veitchiana x Masdevallia hirtzii (Ref.)

Random plant event: Mertensia virginica

The Mertensia virginica across the street from us have survived another family, and another year.

[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part LIII

Having one of those spells where I'm not having any trouble coming up with things to write about, but I'm never happy with the results. Also, as previously mentioned, the Anthuriums are the only plants here that are doing much of anything at the moment. Consequently, we're digging into the transmitted light photos, because that's what the transmitted light photos are for.

By way of observing how old these pictures are: of the six plants photographed for this set that I owned at one time or another (Dracaena, Iresine, Senecio, Chlorophytum, Saintpaulia, Peperomia), only two remain (Dracaena, Chlorophytum).

(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)

Dracaena deremensis 'Janet Craig Compacta.'
Never my favorite plant, and this photo is boring besides, but I'm appreciating it a lot more these days than I used to. No rot, no scale (knock wood), no defoliation. It just sits there, quietly, and photosynthesizes, like plants are supposed to do.


Iresine herbstii 'Blazin' Rose.'
One of the plants I used to own but no longer do. The main reason for this is that it just grew too fast and needed too much light. The coup de grâce happened when spider mites started bothering it, and I decided it was just too much work to keep around any longer. Not necessarily a terrible plant, and it does photograph well occasionally, but I couldn't say I miss having it around. (Indeed, this is the first time I've even thought about I. herbstii in at least a couple years.)


Senecio macroglossus.
Another one that's no longer around. I miss it . . . slightly. It had some nice qualities. It wasn't a good plant for me to be trying to grow, though, for three main reasons. One, it needed more light than I could give it. Two, it was forever tangling itself in the wire shelving I use, which did the plant no serious harm but was frustrating when watering time came around. Three, it needed a lot of grooming -- leaves were always dying but remaining attached to the stem, which made it difficult to groom. And it always needed to be groomed.

It'd be interesting to look at sometime with the microscope, though. You can see some weird stuff happening in there with the veins just from this picture.


Chlorophytum x 'Fire Flash,' dead leaf.
This picture is dramatic, but I think not good. Not the plant's fault, though. The plant is great.


Malva neglecta.
One of Iowa's less objectionable invasive weeds.


Saintpaulia ionantha NOID, petal.
The third plant I no longer own. I like African violets well enough to want to grow them, but not well enough to change the way I care for my plants to make growing them possible. By the time the last of the Saintpaulias went in the garbage, I was pretty exasperated with the genus, and I think I could live the rest of my life quite happily without ever trying to grow another.


Hibiscus moscheutos 'Dave Fleming,' petal.
I'm not particularly into the H. moscheutos varieties I've seen so far, and I don't know why. I mean, they seem like the sort of thing I would like. I like H. rosa-sinensis fine (I don't grow it, because overwintering always seems to be a problem, but I like them to look at.), and it's not that I have a problem with winter-hardy Hibiscus, because I think H. syriacus 'Blue Satin' is great. H. moscheutos is just too extreme for me, in some way I can't articulate. I don't see them very often around here, either. I mean, I see them for sale, just not usually planted. Though I suppose some of that is because I only recognize them when they're blooming, and for a lot of the year, they're not blooming.


Peperomia caperata.
The last of the plants I no longer grow, and the one I would be most likely to try again if I thought there was a chance of success. The problem with P. caperata was always watering. The 14-day cycle most of the plant collection is on is a bit too long for P. caperata, and if I tried to keep them wet longer by moving them to a larger pot, they'd rot. Irreconcilable differences. If I ever do find a way to deal with the watering differently, I will probably try this one again.


Ipomoea NOID, petals.
Say what you will about Ipomoeas (I. nil, I. purpurea, I. tricolor, and so on), but the flowers really are quite lovely even if the plants are weedy.


Musa 'Zebrina Rojo.' (possibly Ensete 'Zebrina Rojo.')
I probably took more photos of 'Zebrina Rojo' than necessary. (Previously: XLVIII, XLIV. And I think there's another photo in the transmitted light reserves.)

Pretty picture: Rhyncholaeliocattleya Paradise Ruby 'Sweetie'

No strong feelings about this one either way, I think.

Rhyncholaeliocattleya Paradise Ruby 'Sweetie' = Rhyncholaeliocattleya Hisako Akatsuka x Cattleya Wendy's Valentine (Ref.)

Random plant event: Huernia oculata, Plus an Outdoor Question

I realize that I just posted about Huernia oculata a month ago, and it wasn't that interesting then either, but not much is going on with the non-Anthurium plants lately. This is also the first bloom I've seen on this particular specimen of H. oculata, which presumably makes it at least a little newsworthy even if it isn't fully open yet.

On an unrelated note: when we first moved to this house, I had bought a bunch of plants from the ex-job. Planted most of them in containers, because we didn't have beds established yet (and, five years later, we still mostly don't, though we're working on it), and I remember being struck by one color combination in particular -- Geranium 'Rozanne' (blue-violet) and some unnamed red-orange Zinnia. (See the last picture on this post.)

I'm wanting to do something like that again somewhere, eventually, though maybe with something more of a true blue and true orange. Would anybody want to recommend some plants for me? Ideally, they would:

1) Be reseeding annuals (preferred) or slowly-spreading perennials, that
2) bloom at more or less the same time (ideally over a long period of time),
3) either aren't fussy as to soil type or could live together in the same soil type, whatever the ideal type might be,
4) could coexist for a reasonably long time without one crowding or shading the other out,
5) would survive a very windy, bright location in zone 5b.

The idea got re-sparked when I ran across the Annie's Annuals page for Nigella damascena 'Miss Jekyll Dark Blue'; I'm also possibly interested in thoughts on Lobelia erinus 'Monsoon', Eschscholzia californica, orange Tagetes patula cultivars, Zinnias, or whatever.

Late April Anthurium (and Schlumbergera) Seedling Update

A few exciting things this time around, in that I've seen some new colors among the Anthuriums. In a couple cases, I'm puzzled about how the color even happened, genetically. And, oh, there are also some new Schlumbergeras except they're all orange.

Chad Michaels (#005)
Seed parent: 'Gemini'

This picture doesn't capture it well, because there's no regular pink-red spathe to compare it to (and my camera auto-adjusted the color), but Chad is absurdly dark red, and the spadix was yellow-green when it first opened. Usually I can at least guess how unexpected colors might have happened, but not in this particular case. I may have better theories once I see Chad's siblings bloom.

The little light-colored dots in the spathe are surface features, not reflections from deeper down,¹ but in photos, they sort of look like metallic flakes.² When I uploaded these pictures to the computer, I was struck by how much Chad resembled like a car painted candy apple red. (e.g.; Google Image Search also has some great pictures for "candy apple red," like whatever this is.)

A less appealing comparison: what with being dark dark red, irregularly shaped, and shiny, it also kind of looks from a distance like a small chunk of liver, or some other meat, sitting on top of a red-brown stick.

A poorly-cropped natural-light comparison of the plain-red "Sawyer Ad" (#245, left) with "Chad Michaels" (#005, right), which hopefully makes it a little clearer how much darker and more meat-like Chad is than any of the other seedlings.

Sylvester (#031)
Seed parent: 'Orange Hot'

Sylvester is my first real orange, and as far as I'm concerned improves twice on its seed parent. 'Orange Hot' is orange-like, but it's really between pink and orange, leaning a little to the pink side. It's not a color I'm fond of, and it's close enough to my skin color to make me feel a little uneasy about being around it. I'm not sure why anyone thought it was a nice enough cultivar to market, but I suppose I could just be growing it wrong.

'Orange Hot' also has a matching spadix. I sometimes like matching spadices, but not usually, and I definitely don't in 'Orange Hot.' So getting a real orange and a contrasting spadix so early in the process feels lucky.

The only thing I object to is the size of the blooms. They're not the smallest (that's probably still "Heather Boah," #149, which I talked about last time³), but they're definitely on the small end of normal.


Elijah Sturdabowtit (#118)
Seed parent: 'Orange Hot'

This is the second bloom for Elijah. (The first came and went so quickly that the only photo I got was when the spathe was barely open.) As you can see, he takes after his mother in having a matching spadix. He's also a lot less decisively orange: the first bloom turned sort of ambiguously orange-pink shortly after opening. That seems to be happening to this one too. Not my favorite, but it's new, and I suppose it's sorta interesting.



Mario Speedwagon (#200)
Seed parent: NOID purple

I have been waiting for so long for a real purple purple. Can't tell yet if Mario is it, but he's as close as I've gotten so far. The shade of purple could be better -- the color is almost exactly the same as the NOID purple he came from -- but I'll take it.

Like Elijah, Mario seems to be turning pink as he ages, especially down the center of the spathe. The above photo was taken on April 18. Five days later, the same inflorescence looked like this:

Some of the difference may be because of different lighting, so I'm not sure that the change has been quite as drastic as this, but there's undeniably been some drift toward pink.


Audrey Quest (#063)
Seed parent: 'Gemini'

Audrey has one of my favorite names,⁴ but I included her in the post mainly because of her spathe's strange proportions: the spathe is 45 mm tall and 57 mm wide. (The perspective in the photo exaggerates this, but it's really a W:H ratio of 1.27. Usually the ratio is about 0.9, ±0.1. So it's very squat-looking.)

I like when they get weird.



Rhea Listick (#231)
Seed parent: 'White Gemini'

The bud got this far, and then started going brown from the inside out. Womp womp. Sucks, too, 'cause I had especially been looking forward to it.

At a guess, Rhea looks like she was headed for something in the pink-purple range, like "Alyssa Edwards" (#035), "Carson Trucks" (#085), and "Ross Koz" (#234). We'll find out eventually: there's already another bud on the plant.


Jujubee (#280)
Seed parent: 'White Gemini'

Not quite red, not quite pink. Nice in person, though the spathe is, again, pretty small. I'd hoped for something more amazing from Juju, since she's one of my favorite real-life queens, but these things happen.


Wes Coast (#273)
Seed parent: 'White Gemini'

Russ Teanale (#239)
Seed parent: 'White Gemini'

Wes and Russ are awfully similar, but that contrasting spadix makes a big difference to the overall impression. (For the record, Russ is pretty much superior in every other respect too: larger, glossier, better proportions, better foliage.)


All Anthurium buds as of 2014 Apr 15:⁵

Top row: "Colin Ambulance" (#097), "Erin Dirtylondry" (#126), "Jillian Jamm" (#216), "Wanda Reulthemal" (#271)
2nd row: "Rhoda Badcek" (#232), "Yvette Horizon" (#275), "Laganja Estranja" (#281), "Rowan DeBoate" (#235)
3rd row: "Anne Pursand" (#283), "Barbara Seville" (#066), "Sarah Problem" (#244), "Mason Pepperspray" (#202)
4th row: "Eliza Boutisecksis" (#120), "Delta Badhand" (#110), "Aurora Boreanaz" (#046) twice
5th row: "Elijah Sturdabowtit" (#118), "Patty Cake" (#223), "Alyssa Edwards" (#035), "Aurora Boreanaz" (#046) again
6th row: "Eileen Dover" (#116), "Bijoux Tuit" (#059), "Carson Trucks" (#085), "Jujubee" (#280)
7th row: "Deena Sequins" (#108), "Rudy Day" (#238), "Ross Koz" (#234), "Rhea Listick" (#231)
8th row: "Betty Larsony" (#058), "Peaches Christ" (#026), "Selma Carr" (#247), "Dave Trading" (#282)
9th row: "Alexis Mateo" (#002), "Chad Michaels" (#005), "Mario Speedwagon" (#200) twice
Not pictured: "Anna Mae Hemensouz" (#203)

As for the Schlumbergeras, the flowers come and go fast enough that I can't always get pictures. Consequently, I'm pretty sure some seedlings have bloomed without me being aware of it. But here are the better photos from April 9 and 15:

Top to bottom: 11, 13, 18. Something about number 13 makes my back hurt. It's like a Schlumbergera as bred by Rob Liefield. (This picture in particular.)
Number 12 got the best photos this go-round, though. Two photos, because it was impossible to choose which one I liked better:

And that's all for another four or five weeks. The next seedling of interest is #097 / "Colin Ambulance." His mother is the NOID purple, but so far, he's sort of a pale peach color. Whatever he does after this, it'll be a surprise.

-

¹ The metallic sparkles and sheens of some plants, like Begonia, Selaginella, and Aglaonema, come from the way the cells are layered, and the air pockets between them, and really are reflections from deeper down in the leaf.
² (It may help to view the photo full size.)
³ Not mentioned last time: Heather's spathes are nearly as dark as Chad's. I didn't think so when the spathe first opened, so that may be a recent development.
⁴ My official favorite Anthurium seedling name (and, by extension, drag queen name) belongs to #543, "Estee Lauder Harder Faster."
⁵ Except for #002 / "Alexis Mateo," which is from 16 Mar 2014. I included it because I'd skipped it earlier; that's the plant that made a bud and then snapped it off on its own by getting the bud caught in the cataphyll, without any interference from me.

Pretty picture: Vanda Blaupunkt

The tag said "Vandofinetia Blaupunkt," but the International Orchid Register says both parents are Vandas (Vanda coerulescens x Vanda falcata).

"Blaupunkt" means "blue dot" in German, and is also the name of a German electronics equipment manufacturer. I'd argue that these flowers are not blue, dot-like, or electronic equipment, but I gave up long ago on expecting orchid names to make any sense.