Pretty picture: Rhyncholaelia digbyana

Not a lot to say about this orchid that hasn't already been covered in one of its previous appearances (mostly the first one): 2010, 2012. I will say this is probably a lot closer to the actual color of the flower than the previous years' attempts have been.

Anthurium no. 0415 "Darby Dragons"

So I totally admit that Darby is not attractive.

The bloom isn't an interesting color. It's super-small. Thrips love it. And as bad as the bloom is, the foliage is even worse:

The whole plant is just kind of garbage. But there's one thing about it that's kind of amazing, which is that it's fast. Like, record-setting, nine-months-ahead-of-schedule fast.

The time from sowing a seed to seeing a first bloom currently averages 26 months, for the plants that have bloomed so far. And that's likely to keep increasing; I've seen one other new bud from a plant sown in 2013,¹ and there have been a few blooms from late 2012, but those don't do much to push the average bloom time lower.² Darby does. Darby is in fact a record, I think: a mere 14 months from sow to first bloom.³

Which is great news, or at least would be if Darby didn't otherwise suck so much. I've decided to wait for a second bloom before deciding what to do with her, and I might try pollinating her on the off chance that she'd have less awful children, but . . . well, don't get too attached to Darby. I probably won't even try to sell her.

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¹ Specifically 0357 "Rhea Litré," who will be the subject of a later post.
² The blooms with late-2012 sow dates would be 0334 "Jean Poole," 0329 "Gladys Panzarov," 0330 "Faye Quinette," 0346 "Lois Carmen DiNominatre" (bloom still in progress), 0344 "Formica Dinette," 0335 "Donna Fanuday" (bud aborted), and 0597 "Raven" (in progress), who produced their first buds at the ages of 25, 26, 27, 27, 27, 28, and 29 months, respectively.
³ The previous record-holder was 0282 "Dave Trading," at 15 months.
There's also a special case with 0058 "Betty Larsony," who might have started a bud at the age of 12 months, but it was never completely clear whether there was a bud or not, and if there were a bud, it never opened. In an earlier post, I credited one of the early blooms to Betty, but subsequent investigation showed that it most likely belonged to 0059 "Bijoux Tuit" and was misattributed. So Betty probably doesn't count as being faster than Dave.

Anthurium no. 0132 "Eve Stropper"

I hadn't been expecting to like Eve -- I've seen enough pinkish-red blooms by now that they're kind of boring,¹ plus I don't care for spadices that match the spathes, as a rule. But she surprised me.

The first bloom on Eve is surprisingly large, it's stayed more or less flat, and while there have been thrips, they only left a couple marks on the spathe, and mostly appear to have left it alone. She's even started a second bud already.

And the leaves aren't amazing or anything, but they're not bad. So Eve's a keeper. Too bad I don't have room for another 6-inch Anthurium. (Why are Craigslist Iowans not interested in two-foot-tall Coffea arabica seedlings? I have SOOOOOOO MANY.)

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¹ This mostly refers to 0046 "Aurora Boreanaz," who I have only recently realized photographs inconsistently because there are two different seedlings in the same pot, which I probably would never have figured out had they not both decided to bloom at once. In the other cases where multiple Anthurium seedlings got planted together, either one seedling has taken over the pot and squeezed the other out of existence, or the seedlings are living together comfortably but only one has matured enough to bloom. One of Aurora's plants produces pink-red / pink-purple blooms, and the other produces red / dark-purple blooms:

I could separate them and assign a new number to one of them, I suppose, but since the difference between the two is mainly just that one is lighter than the other, and because separating them would kind of screw up my whole numbering system, I think I'm just going to continue to think of them as both being Aurora. Maybe "Aurora-red" and "Aurora-pink," if I need to differentiate.
Besides both of the "Aurora Boreanaz"es, Eve is most similar to 0108 "Deena Sequins," 0110 "Delta Badhand," and 0116 "Eileen Dover," all four of which I suspect are NOID purple x 'Orange Hot' crosses. Eve's seed parent is 'Gemini,' so it can't be a fifth one of those, but my guess is that it's getting the coloration from 'Orange Hot,' since the NOID purple usually shows up as a purple spadix. Therefore, my guess is 0132 "Eve Stropper" = 'Gemini' x 'Orange Hot.' No way to find out at this point, of course. And it possibly doesn't even matter. But I like trying to figure it out anyway.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Petula's Peacock

Sorry about the lack of a post on Friday; I was working on one, but it wasn't coming together properly, and I didn't have a backup.

Anyway. I'm not crazy about the way this photo turned out, but this is one of the dark Paphiopedilums from this year's show that I was talking about a few posts ago. You'll see a more impressive one in June.

Paphiopedilum Petula's Peacock = Paphiopedilum Ruby Peacock x Paphiopedilum Petula's Mystery (Ref.)

Anthurium no. 0330 "Faye Quinette"

I feel like I should probably get this out of the way right at the beginning: Faye is more or less impossible to photograph. Keep that in mind.

Faye's the brown one. You remember the brown one. Super-slow to develop, which was even more agonizing than normal because I was anxious to see how the bloom would turn out. But so here it is:

As sometimes happens, the front and back of the spathe are different colors. The back stayed more or less the same medium wood-brown throughout the bud development, and only started to change after the spathe had been fully open for a while. The spathe interior is a dull light orange. This is the most accurate photo I could get that shows both colors at once:

I was sort of braced for Faye to be awesome, and I was sort of prepared for her to be terrible, but this is neither of those, so I'm not sure what to feel.

What I actually got is probably more pleasant-looking than what I would have had if the interior matched the exterior. If nothing else, it doesn't look as dead as I'd thought it might. Which is possibly good. And I like that it's something new and different, even if it's not quite as different as I was expecting. We lucked out with the contrasting spadix, too: a matching spadix on this color would have been gross. And the foliage is good.

It's just that it's a little too pretty to be ugly, and a little too ugly to be pretty.

The other thing this means is that I probably didn't have to get 'Midori' last summer after all, since I apparently already had a plant that produces chlorophyll in the spathes. The seed parent is the NOID red, which even if the spathes on the NOID red aren't particularly dark or brownish, they're dark enough that it seems plausible that that's where the green is coming from. (For the orange, there's really only one plausible choice -- 'Orange Hot,' which seems to have been involved in most or all of the seedlings with orange blooms.¹) Though 'Midori' is now kind of exciting on her own, since I'm pretty sure the first bloom of 'Midori' that I pollinated had the NOID red as the pollen parent. The seedlings from that cross² could, in theory, wind up red, red-brown, green, or tan.

So what do you think? Pretty? Ugly? Neither? Both? Interesting? "Interesting?"³

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¹ 'Orange Hot' is the seed parent for 0120 "Eliza Boutisecksis" and 0031 "Sylvester," both of which are solidly orange, as well as the orange-then-pink 0118 "Elijah Sturdabowtit."
0580 "Marsha Marsha Marsha" looks orange so far, but has not yet opened a bud, so that's a tentative confirmation of the theory: her seed parent is 'Orange Hot' also.
The only orange blooming seedling that doesn't work with this theory is 0329 "Gladys Panzarov," but whatever explains Faye also explains Gladys, since they're siblings.
The strangest thing, for me, is that 'Orange Hot,' despite the name, is barely orange at all. I mean, Eliza, Sylvester, Elijah, Marsha, and Gladys are all way more decisively orange than 'Orange Hot.' Which makes me very curious about why it's named that. Was "Peach Hot' taken?
² Only four of which are official so far: 1033 "Phoenix," 1092 "Mia Amor," 1093 "Luna Stones," and 1094 "Ella Vawaydego." Here's a recent picture of Phoenix:

I do still have some seedlings from this cross still in the germination containers, though.
³ I.e., I hate it but I don't want to say so to your face like this so I'll say something ambiguous and let you decide what you want it to mean.

Pretty picture: Vanda Princess Mikasa Pink

I mentioned in a post last year that Google said V. Princess Mikasa can also be pink, but that I hadn't seen it personally. And now I have.

I can't figure out from the available information whether this is from the same cross that produced the original blue-violet Princess Mikasa, or if it's a different cross that someone just named the same. The International Orchid Register doesn't have a separate entry for Princess Mikasa Pink (so that's probably not even its name, technically: it's probably just Princess Mikasa), which makes me think it's probably a sibling of the blue-violet Princess Mikasa, but the world of orchids is often illogical, redundant, self-contradictory, or counterintuitive, and I gave up on it making sense a long time ago, so bear in mind that that's only a guess.

If the pink Princess Mikasa is from the same cross as the violet Princess Mikasa, its ancestry is:

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

Previously: 2013, 2014 (both are the blue-violet version)

Anthuriums no. 0257 and 0264

Anthurium seedling 0257 has probably the truest and most relevant name of all the seedlings: Summer Bederth-Enuthers.

Summer herself is not among the cream of the crop: goodness knows I have plenty of red / yellow seedlings to choose from, and she hasn't especially distinguished herself. Though there's nothing wrong with her either.¹ Leaves are unremarkable.

Seedling 0264 "Trey Lerpark" is along the same lines, except with a white spadix.

Trey's main distinguishing characteristic at this point is his stubborn refusal to completely unfurl his spathe. Maybe he's slow, maybe he's just genetically mandated to keep his spathe curved. I'd actually be fine with the latter, since the usual alternative to spathes staying concave is for them to flip backward and turn convex, which is stupid-looking. We'll see. In any case, he's also not particularly special either, for good or ill. Leaves are pretty typical.

The only thing that comes to mind is that I don't recall ever seeing any thrips, not that I have perfect recall of every time I've seen thrips.

I have the first orchid photo from 2015 scheduled for 6 April, and then I'll start showing you some Anthurium seedlings that actually are notable and cool. Or at least one seedling is (depending on how you feel about 0132 "Eve Stropper"). And maybe the "cool" one isn't actually cool, just notable. Though you might think it was cool: I don't know what you consider cool. The point is, it's not all going to be the same red and pink, red and pink, over and over again forever. I promise.

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¹ Or, well, one thing -- I may have seen a thrips once or twice. She doesn't seem to be inordinately bothered by thrips, unlike some of my seedlings (both 0046 "Aurora Boreanaz" and 0108 "Deena Sequins" are awful about this), but it's something of a character flaw to have any thrips.

Anthuriums no. 0041, 0220, 0237, 0344

SO MUCH PINK DEAR GOD MAKE IT STOP

Actually things aren't quite that bad; I'm throwing these four pinks together in a single post because I don't have much to say about any of them individually, and because this gets them all out of the way so we can talk about some marginally more interesting seedlings later. And for the record: I actually like pink just fine: I'm objecting to the repetition, not the color itself.

Seedling no. 0041 "Anna Graham"

Anna produced a first bud a long time ago, which was tiny and pale but unmistakeably pink, just like this one. I wasn't especially impressed the first time -- it was different, sure, but also tiny, and the color was a little too washed-out to be very interesting. I'm more into it now: the plant has grown quite a bit, the new foliage is pretty nice, and although the flowers are small, I have to admit that they do stand out pretty well against the rest of the plant. So Anna got the last available promotion to 6-inch; if I want to up-pot any more seedlings, I'm going to have to clear off another shelf.


Seedling no. 0220 "Nora Morse"

Nora and #0219 "Rhoda Horse" both started buds at the same time, but Rhoda chickened out, or something. Rhoda's bud was sort of kinked, like the most recent one from #0275 "Yvette Horizon," which may or may not be related. The only thing that's especially interesting about Nora is that she's a slightly different shade of pink, which leans ever so slightly to orange. Still really pink, though, obviously.


Seedling no. 0237 "Roxy Casbah"

Roxy started a bud last year and aborted during the summer, so it's mildly gratifying to see her trying again this year. That said, the color is exactly what I imagine when I'm talking about the pink / pinks, and we've seen it plenty of times. Also my brain tells me that any variation on the name "Roxanne" needs to have a red bloom,¹ so it's difficult for me to remember which one Roxy is.²


Seedling no. 0344 "Formica Dinette"

Formica leans slightly toward the highlighter-pink color of #0275 "Yvette Horizon," but without the distorted spathe. So . . . um . . . good for her, I guess. Could be worse.

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¹ ♪Roxaaaaaaaaaaaane -- you don't have to put on the red spathe, those days are over, grab a loofah, get in the bathtub, and bathe♫ (There are very very few English rhymes for "spathe," it turns out. Pretty much limited to "scathe," "bathe," and "lathe," as far as words anybody else would know the meaning of.)
² Fortunately, 0236 "Roxanne DeBree" looks like she's going to be red. No indication either way from 0050 "Roxxxy Andrews," but Roxxxy's so old that I figure if she were going to bloom, she would have done so by now, so maybe it doesn't matter.