Anthurium no. 0558 "Amber Waves"

Amber would bother me, due to the bloom/name color mismatch,¹ except that there is very little chance that she's going to stick around long enough to be a problem, so I'm not changing her name.

I don't know what happened here for sure. There are a number of bacterial and fungal infections that can hit Anthuriums, one of which (anthracnose, caused by the fungus Colletotrichum gloeosporioides) turns spadices black, but I don't think that's what's going on here, because anthracnose doesn't shrivel them up. Though you can tell from looking at the spathe that this bloom was likely having multiple problems, so I suppose we can't rule it out.

Also, while I realize that any bacterial or fungal problem would have to hit some seedling first, it seems like I've had enough Anthuriums here for long enough that if I had some sort of spadix-eating disease lurking around, I would have seen it hit before this. Amber's my 98th Anthurium seedling to produce a finished bloom, after all. That's a lot of spadices coming and going before this particular problem showed up. So I would be surprised to find out that it's a bacterial or fungal problem.

But you never know. I don't deliberately try to find pathogens to expose my seedlings to, but maybe I should: how depressing would it be to come up with a really pretty and interesting hybrid and then discover that it's commercially useless because it contracts a disfiguring disease at the drop of a hat? On the other hand, deliberately bringing diseases into the collection seems like it would impair my ability to create new seeds, and the fewer plants I can get seeds from, the lower my overall genetic diversity; the lower the genetic diversity, the harder it will be for me to come up with a seedling that is simultaneously pretty, interesting, disease-resistant, and not overly bothered by bugs. So maybe the best strategy is to make as many seedlings as I can, select out the prettiest ones, and assume that some of them are going to be nonviable for some reason or another, without worrying too hard about what that reason might be.²

Maybe Amber was just having a really bad day. I've said enough times that it's not a good idea to judge a seedling by the first bloom it produces. So we'll see if the next one is better. I'm not expecting it to be so much better that it saves Amber from the garbage can, but we'll see.

The leaves are at least okay, and the shape is slightly interesting:

Ditto for the plant overall (not crazy about that internodal distance, though):

Even the best-case scenario here has Amber as just another red or pinkish-red, so she's probably not worth waiting on, but I probably will anyway. If nothing else, I'd like to get a better photo to remember her by.

-

¹ This wasn't a problem I'd considered, when I started out, and then a lot of the seedlings saddled with problematic names have died, so for the most part, it hasn't mattered. It's still potentially a problem for 0039 "Honey Mahogany," 0043 "Jade Jolie," 0084 "Chocolate Sunrise," 0490 "Rusty Ryan," 0532 "Amber Alert," 0605 "Rusti Fawcett," 0654 "Rosie Cheeks," 0691 "Jade," and 0949 "Cherri Baum," and so far only two of those (0039 and 0532) have even attempted to bloom, so I'm not going to bother renaming them just yet. Three (0490, 0605, and 0949) are even likely to bloom in name-appropriate colors, should they bloom, so they'll probably work out without me having to do anything.
The only reason this is an issue at all -- because, remember, these were only ever intended as place-holder names -- is that it's a lot easier for me to keep the names straight if they don't contradict the blooms. I still have a tough time with 0237 "Roxy Casbah," because my brain insists that any seedling named "Roxy" has to have red spathes, not pink.
² Though the don't-get-attached part is a problem.

Anthurium no. 0386: "Violet Chachki"

I said a while back that I had a list of drag queen names that were unusable, because they imply a color, and I can't know what color my plants are going to bloom before I name them, so in order to use that set of names, I'd have to wait until a plant with a crappy name bloomed and then swap the names with something color-appropriate. I didn't figure that would happen anytime soon, and was somewhat resistant to the idea because of all the paperwork I'd have to do to make the name change official, but then seedling 0386 bloomed, and it seemed like a really good time to find out how much of a hassle that would really be.

0386's original name was "Bjorn Innabarn," which seemed good enough at first but grated on me the more I used it, and then he turned out to bloom in purple.

Well, that's obviously not going to happen all the time, and I figured I'd wind up talking about 0386 a lot because of the unusual color, and the idea of seeing and typing "Bjorn Innabarn" a lot was unpleasant. Hence, "Violet Chachki." The paperwork wasn't that bad.

Violet's buds are maybe prettier and more interesting than the actual blooms are; they're at least a better shade of purple. Once the spathes open, they wind up receiving some thrips damage.

For the moment, Violet's the only genuinely purple purple in bloom. Her seed parent, the NOID purple, is still technically alive, but in a much-reduced form that's not likely to bloom anytime soon.¹ 0200 "Mario Speedwagon" did get around to making a new bud, after keeping me waiting for about a year, but the bud got snapped off accidentally during the shelf restructuring. And 'Joli' has a purple bloom too, but its blooms fade to pink pretty quickly, plus it's having thrips troubles, so the blooms usually don't look very good. So Violet currently has the weight of representing the entire purple-blooming community on her petioles. Which is a lot to ask of a seedling who's only 29 months old.

Obviously Violet's a keeper, by virtue of not being pink or red. The oldest leaves are pretty messed up from something or another:

but the newest ones have been a lot better, so whatever the problem was, she seems to be growing out of it.

And the overall plant is merely okay, but I moved her to a bigger pot, so that should improve soon as well. There's already a second bud (not visible in the below picture, but trust me).

So: Violet could be better, but there's reason for optimism.

Mostly I'm just relieved to see another chance to hang on to any of the NOID purple's genes; it never produced very many seeds to begin with, and its offspring are terrible at staying alive.

I have no blooms or buds from the NOID purple that could produce new seeds, at the moment. There are no seeds still in the germination containers, waiting to be potted up. Of those that were potted up, only 31% survive past the two-year mark. So as of 12 September, the genetic legacy of the NOID purple rests on 19 seedlings, several of which are all but certain to die before blooming.² So any seedlings that survive long enough to bloom are pretty important.

There are also a few decent-looking grandchildren of the NOID purple around now; none are old enough to bloom yet, but three of them³ look pretty sturdy. I also have some grandchildren in germination containers, waiting to be potted up, but they're all the offspring of 0108 "Deena Sequins," who makes really strange-looking kids. Normal Anthurium seedlings have the same general form as the adults, just smaller, like this blurry one from 'White Gemini:'

Deena's seedlings, on the other hand, often have large numbers of very tiny leaves on the ends of disproportionately long petioles, like so:

I don't know yet whether this is something they'll grow out of or not; the twelve I've potted up so far look fairly normal (though the long-petiole thing does seem to be fairly consistent, and they appear to sucker a lot more than the typical seedling), but then I probably chose to pot up the most normal-looking ones I could find, too.

The only other option for purple-bloom genes is 'Joli.' Even though the blooms change color pretty quickly, it's obvious enough that there are genes in there for making purple pigments, so that's good. The problem is that it's difficult to breed with as well. Many batches of 'Joli' seeds I start have a 0% germination rate; of the seeds that do germinate, most of them grow very slowly.⁴

So maybe I shouldn't abandon all hope of a nice dark purple bloom, but I'm glad that's not my only Anthurium-related goal, 'cause it looks like it's going to be a lot of trouble.

-

¹ The original plant was on the verge of collapse, possibly from being overpotted, so I cut it back to the soil line and tried to root the tops in water. This worked well enough to get me one pretty sparse-looking 4- or 5-inch pot, but it hasn't grown much or tried to bud, so I don't have high hopes for it. The original plant has sprouted a couple new growing tips from the stump, which is good news, but it'll be a while before they're big enough to consider blooming, and since I haven't moved the plant to a smaller pot (for fear that doing so would disrupt whatever recovery process is happening), it seems like there's a good chance of it rotting before it blooms anyway.
² It's possible that the NOID purple might have produced pollen at some point, in which case some of its genes would be out there but hidden from me. I don't recall it producing pollen, but by this point I barely recall it blooming at all. So there's a sliver of pollen-related hope.
³ 0768 "Glenda Bender" (parent: 0200 "Mario Speedwagon")
0791 "Joslyn Fox" (parent: 0200 "Mario Speedwagon")
0799 "Hope Sandreams" (parent: 0108 "Deena Sequins")
⁴ Overall stats for 'Joli' seeds:
82 seeds collected and sown (between 27 March and 19 August 2015)
21 seeds germinated (a 26% germination rate)
4 seedlings that look at all vigorous as of 12 September
1 seedling vigorous enough to pot up (1171 "Chris of Hur")
Chris is doing well enough so far, I guess. He's not obviously unhappy about anything, and the thrips seem to be leaving it more or less alone. Also some of the seeds were started recently enough that they might yet germinate and develop well, or grow into something more vigorous-looking, so the situation may not be as dire as it looks. But the seeds started in March and April had an 11% germination rate overall, with only a single seedling that looked strong at all (which was Chris). So 'Joli' is less useful than I'd hoped.

Ambiguously pretty pictures: Neostylis Lou Sneary 'Colorful Blue' and Guarianthe x guatemalensis

These were actually perfectly nice plants and flowers (well, the Neostylis was maybe a little on the yellow side, but it was trying hard to be green, you could tell), but my camera just failed to get an in-focus, usable shot of them. Rather than discard the photos, I'm using them anyway, partly because I figure the photos will look more focused after they get shrunk down to fit the blog, and partly because I thought the Guarianthe was pretty, and an imperfectly-focused photo of it is better than no photo at all.

Guarianthe x guatemalensis = Guarianthe aurantiaca x Guarianthe skinneri (naturally occurring hybrid¹)

It appears that "Neostylis Lou Sneary" has become obsolete since I looked it up in March, and is now Vandachostylis Lou Sneary. Either that or the orchid registry where I look these things up only just got around to changing it. Or I was rushing through the process so much that I didn't bother to check whether the name was still current. Whichever of these three possibilities applies, my reaction's the same: *sigh*.

Neostylis Lou Sneary 'Colorful Blue' = Vanda falcata x Rhynchostylis coelestis (Ref.)

-

¹ I don't have a reference recorded for this one, but I'm pretty sure I didn't just make it up. How badly do you want to know where it came from?

Anthurium no. 0416 "Holy McGrail"

Holy McGrail is an actual performer, though not a drag queen: she's a "faux queen;" i.e. a biological woman who takes on the general performance style of drag queens. Which is a whole scene unto itself, apparently, though my understanding is that there's a fair amount of drag queen / faux queen cross-pollination.

I no longer remember whether I knew Holy was a faux queen when I added her name to the list, but I've never been super rigid about categorizing, when it comes to the name list, because the borders between different categories (drag king, drag queen, female impersonator, transvestite, faux queen, genderqueer, genderfuck, trans man, trans woman, etc.) are all pretty fuzzy, and people identify in different ways at different points in their lives (sometimes), and so I've mostly just decided that if a performer is anywhere near this general cluster of labels then I'm adding them to the list. And faux queens are close enough. But it all gets really complicated, and I figure I'm bound to offend someone sooner or later, as not all of these groups like one another or necessarily want to be associated with the others (the border between "drag queen" and "trans woman" is sort of particularly fraught lately). So if you've got a problem with faux queens being included, or really anything else about the seedling names, um, I guess e-mail me about it or something.

In Holy's particular case, I think the question is ultimately moot. Because this is an ugly bloom:

With ugly leaves:

I'd have a tough time coming up with anything nice to say about the plant at all, frankly:

So probably the plant's going in the trash soon, and the name will wind up recycled for another seedling down the line somewhere.¹ I'm waiting to see whether the second bloom, currently pretty close to opening, will wind up being any better: if it is, then I might wind up hanging on to Holy a little longer. She could turn it all around and be awesome. In theory. I guess. But don't get attached.

-

¹ This happens all the time. The next "Dawn Kekong" will be the fifth seedling saddled with that name. (#s 0102, 0315, 0664, and 1054 are all deceased; if I bother trying it again, the next Dawn Kekong should fall somewhere in the 1700s.)

Anthurium no. 0328 "Polly Esther Blend"

This post took a while to shape into something I would have considered posting, and then on Sunday I decided I didn't like it. So I started it over from scratch, which means that all kinds of things have happened between this post and the one I posted on Wednesday.

The main thing that's happened, which took all of one day and a few hours from a second, is that I redid the shelves in the basement. Took all the plants off,¹ took all the lights off, disassembled the shelves, cleaned the shelves, cleaned the lights,² reassembled the shelves, put the lights back on, put the plants back on. It was also fairly frantic work, because I still needed to water plants the next day, so the situation was basically: I had exactly sixteen hours, in which to do exactly sixteen hours of work.

All this was necessary because I'd run out of room, and there was no more floor space to take over, so the only direction I could expand was up. And the only place I could actually expand upwards was at one end of the shelves -- everywhere in the basement there were 6-foot-tall shelves except for some 4-footers at one end. So I bought a new 6-foot shelf set, which I swapped in for the four-foot shelves, and I got a few cubic feet near the ceiling. And I took the opportunity to adjust the shelf heights, so the plants don't have to burn themselves on the fluorescent bulbs anymore and everything has enough space to grow a little.

Things aren't entirely settled yet; I still need to hang a light from the ceiling in one spot, and I'd really like to find an alternate location for some non-Anthurium plants, because I'd overlooked them in the original planning and so now they're in empty shelves I'd intended to use for Anthurium expansion, but I guess things are okay for the moment. Certainly the framework is in place, and I can tweak stuff later as the opportunities present themselves.³

Anyway. So.

I wasn't expecting 0328 "Polly Esther Blend" to turn out like she did. Polly has two siblings who had bloomed before her: 0329 "Gladys Panzarov," which is an intense, saturated orange with a beige spadix, and 0330 "Faye Quinette," which is complicated, but sort of a light red-orange / beige.⁴ What I got from Polly instead was light pink / beige, which is the first time I've seen that particular color combination.

Seeing Polly, Gladys, and Faye side-by-side, you wouldn't think that they were particularly closely related.⁵

Top to bottom: 0328 "Polly Esther Blend," 0329 "Gladys Panzarov," 0330 "Faye Quinette." I suppose you could argue that they look sort of related, insofar as they're all at least slightly orange with beige-ish spadices, and neither Polly nor Faye are very dark. But "I guess they could maybe be related" is not the same thing as "OMG those are definitely related," as is the case with some of the other sibling groups.
The strongest resemblances Polly has to her sisters are in the size of her spathes (small side of normal, like Gladys) and her leaves, which are basically identical to Gladys's:

As she aged, Polly's spadix lost whatever yellow tint it started out with, and the spathe went from an ambiguous light orange-pink to a less interesting light pink.

Left: August 1. Right: August 11.
So that's a little disappointing. Polly is also shorter than her siblings, which is odd but not necessarily bad.

I'm not sure what kind of breeding potential there might be from Polly (do I really want to tempt the gods to send me more pink Anthuriums?), but I like her, and I intend to keep her. We'll see how things go.

-

¹ There was also a temporary side benefit, in that our downstairs toilet has never looked lovelier:

I mean, we couldn't use it, but it was pretty. For a toilet. The photo really doesn't do it justice.
And why were there Anthuriums around the toilet? Well, I had something like 120 square feet of plants to put somewhere while I got the shelves together, and the basement only had just so much free space, so plants wound up everywhere. Around the toilet, in the shower, on the futon, under the stationary bike, on the coffee table, under the coffee table, etc.
² In fairness, almost all of the shelf- and light-cleaning was taken on by the husband, who had better things to do with his time but did this for me anyway.
³ Also, I apologize for the lack of photos of the process. I did take pictures here and there as we went along, but I didn't take a "before" picture to compare to, which was a mistake, and the pictures I did get mostly didn't turn out well and more or less fail to illustrate what happened.
⁴ I keep meaning to do a follow-up blog post about Faye, but the new seedlings keep taking all my attention. So maybe I should just talk about her here, since I brought her up.
Faye's got two blooms on her at once now, and the most amazing thing is that they both have these psychedelic, unphotographable backs, sort of brownish-orange with bright green veins. The front is a lighter and redder orange that fades to a light orange, which would be noteworthy all by itself, but the backs of the spathes make Faye really remarkable. My camera isn't up to the challenge, but here's the closest I've gotten so far:

In person, the contrast is much sharper and stronger, and the green is a lot more vivid. I'll keep trying to get a good picture, but don't hold your breath.
Faye has had problems off and on with scale, and I've recently started seeing thrips as well, though her leaves are broad and sturdy and so relatively easy to wipe off, so I'm not especially worried about the scale yet. It's not clear whether the thrips will actually become a problem or not.
⁵ There's a fourth sibling from the AX group (seed parent: NOID red; sow date: 9 November 2012), 0331 "Elvis Herselvis," but so far Elvis takes strongly after her mother. It looks like she's going to be a dark red, probably with either a green or white spadix, but she's developing very slowly so it might be a while before I can confirm this. In any case, it doesn't look like Elvis will look any more related to Polly, Gladys, or Faye than they do to one another.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Memoria Larry Heuer

I feel like the camera didn't handle this one particularly well this year. Fortunately, there's a better picture of the same plant from 2013, for anyone who's interested.

It seems like I took a lot of Paphiopedilum and Phragmipedium pictures again this year; some of the reason for that might be that they're easier to take pictures of. The auto-focus on the camera doesn't handle stuff with lots of little flowers at varying distances very well: it always seems to choose one particular bloom at random to focus on, and it's never the one I want it to focus on. But with a paph or phrag, the whole flower is right there, more or less facing the camera directly, and even if the pictures don't always turn out that well, they can't go wrong in as many ways.

Paphiopedilum Memoria Larry Heuer = Paphiopedilum malipoense x Paphiopedilum emersonii (Ref.)

Anthurium no. 0338 "Anne Fibian"

With some of these Anthurium-seedling posts, I've been trying to answer a question that I don't think anyone is actually asking: "should I try plant-breeding, too? Would I like it?" I mean, obviously the answer is going to depend on your personality and what kind of resources you have available, and even if I knew those things I still probably couldn't answer it very accurately. But it's been sort of fun to contemplate how plant breeding as a hobby is different from growing houseplants as a hobby, and the sorts of rewards (and penalties) that belong to one but not the other.

Not that I'm finished doing that; I mention it because, one, the seedling of the day is not very interesting so I'm going to need to talk about something else, and two, because I'm about to come up with another take on answering the question. But let's do the seedling first.

So Anne is: not great. At least so far. This is possibly a case where I should wait to make a decision until the second bloom. The first bloom, though, is a little spadix-heavy (or a little spathe-light, I suppose), and since it's also in the second most common color (red / yellow), I'm not really into it at all.

The foliage could be nice, if it weren't all pockmarked. I still haven't figured out what causes that. I assume it's the result of insect or mite damage on developing leaves, but I usually can't see any actual insects or mites, and from time to time, plants appear to grow out of it completely, which you wouldn't expect from a pest problem.

The overall habit¹ is decently compact, though for a two-and-a-half-year-old plant, I'd expect more leaves than this. At least Anne's trying to offset.

I could imagine keeping Anne around, if she started to produce some better leaves, and if the second bloom is a little more normal-looking. I'm not in any rush to throw her out, at least. But I'm guessing she won't still be in the house in five years.

As far as the "should I try plant-breeding?" question:

Long ago, when my only real source of information was houseplant books -- and I read a lot of houseplant books -- I would never have had any idea that a lot of plants even could be grown from seed, because the authors never mentioned it. Presumably some of this comes from the assumption that readers would want exact duplicates of the plants they already had, and growing plants from seed won't usually give you that. Plus space is limited in a book, and growing plants from seed is a pretty niche interest. Growing plants from seed indoors is going to appeal to even fewer people, and you want people to buy your book. So I get it.

With that said, though, few books even mention that it's possible. Of the seven houseplant books I have handy,² only two (Toogood, Griffith) so much as mention that Schlumbergeras can be grown from seed, and both of those are specialty books, one aimed at large-scale plant producers (Griffith) and the other specifically about plant propagation (Toogood). The situation is slightly better for Anthurium (Toogood, Kramer, Crockett, Griffith) and Spathiphyllum (Toogood, Kramer, Griffith), though none of the books have much to say about how one would grow either from seeds, or how one would get seeds to sow in the first place: they just note that it can be done. A surprising number of books fail to mention Coffea at all, and of those that do, only Crockett bothers to mention that they can be grown from seeds.³

So for the longest time, I assumed that there was no way to get more of certain plants I really enjoyed, like Anthurium, aside from the long, slow process of waiting for offsets.^{4, 5} So one of the incidental benefits of plant-breeding, at least when it comes to the Anthuriums and Spathiphyllums, is that it's opened up new things I can do with old, slow, or boring plants.

Sometimes that doesn't exactly pay off, as with Anne. But trying things is more interesting than not trying things.

-

¹ Am I the only one who occasionally has a quick mental picture of plants as nuns and/or addicts, when reading about their "habits?" Just me? Okay.
² • Stuckey, Maggie. The Houseplant Encyclopedia. The Philip Lief Group, Inc., Garden City, NY, 1993.
• Crockett, James Underwood. Crockett's Indoor Garden. Little, Brown & Company, Canada, 1978.
• Simons, Paul, and John Ruthven. Potted Histories. BBC Books, London, 1995.
• Powell, Dr. Charles C., and Donald M. Vining. Ortho's Complete Guide to Successful Houseplants. Ortho Books, San Francisco, CA, 1984.
• Kramer, Jack. The Illustrated Guide to Flowering Houseplants. Peerage Books, London, 1985.
• Toogood, Alan, ed. Plant Propagation. DK Publishing, Inc., New York, NY, 1999.
• Griffith, Lynn P., Jr. Tropical Foliage Plants: A Grower's Guide. Ball Publishing, Batavia, IL, 1998.
³ In fact, it usually seems to be taken for granted that if you have one Coffea, you're not going to want any more. I disagree, but you're probably not going to want a lot more. They do get really big.
I think I've read somewhere that Coffea can be grown from cuttings as well, though I've never tried it, and I'm pretty sure none of the books mention it. No idea where I might have seen that, but I keep meaning to try it some day, just to satisfy my own curiosity about whether it's possible.
⁴ Sucker production used to be something that breeders selected for, both because a plant with a lot of suckers looks fuller and can produce more blooms at once, and because the more suckers there are, the faster you can propagate a plant asexually. Now that tissue culture is the industry standard for propagation, suckers matter less: if you want a full plant with lots of blooms, it's easy enough to pot several tissue-cultured plants together.
That said, suckering has probably never been the main thing Anthuriums were selected for, and if your hybrid could resist bacterial and fungal infection, produced lots of large flowers on long, straight stems, had a novel bloom color, shipped well, and lasted a long time in a vase, you had a gold mine, whether it suckered a lot or not. Consequently, cultivars available in stores now vary tremendously in how many offsets they will produce, and the speed with which they will do so, so if you buy a plant you really like with the expectation of dividing lots of suckers from it, you may or may not find yourself disappointed.
⁵ Plant books usually don't mention that you can take top cuttings of Anthuriums either, though in that case it kind of makes sense: the plants that have been cut back recover slowly and may not rebloom for a couple years, and my experience has been that cuttings fail a lot more often than suckers do. (Usually they root in water fine, but then fall apart after getting moved to soil.)

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."

-

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.