Schlumbergera seedling no. 217

Assuming that there's no last-minute bloom from one of the yet-to-bloom seedlings, 217 looks to be the last of the non-orange flowers from this year. And it's a nice one: similar to 106A Jaws of Elmo or 079A Yayoi Kusama. I suppose if I see enough red-orange-white seedlings like this, I'll get bored with them eventually, but we're not there yet.

For names, nothing really leaps out at me, so let's go with the category thing again. That's been working out okay.

Color: Cosmopolitan. I've never had a cosmopolitan so I'm not sure what they look like in real life, but the photos that come up in an image search are mostly red or orange-red, with a twist of orange peel, so the colors are at least an approximate match. It's at least the best color match I'm going to get for Cosmopolitan this year.

Shape: it's kind of cheating, I suppose, but the one and only flower on seedling 217 was way out on the end of a long stem, dangling by itself, which means that I had to photograph it head-on more than usual, which led me to think of the Frilled Lizard, Chlamydosaurus kingii. Looking at photos in image searches, they're really not that similar,¹ but shape-related seedling names are hard to come by so I'm going to keep it in the mix.

Previously-considered was a hard choice; the list of previously-considered names keeps getting longer. I decided to go with Retoreto, the Rapa Nui word for bright, flaming red, which was previously (sort of) considered for 102 Michonne.

Pop-cultural is also getting increasingly difficult and I may have to come up with a new category soon; the best I could come up with for this seedling was Clifford, after the Clifford the Big Red Dog series by Norman Bridwell.

And finally, the Whatever category. My family moved from Iowa to Texas after I finished fifth grade. I exchanged letters a few times with some of the friends I left in Iowa, but, you know, sixth-graders: not great on follow-through. So I lost touch with them. Roughly twenty years later, a coworker who had just finished her shift paged her boyfriend up to the front because she was about to leave, and I was like, did you page [name]? Is that the same [name] who used to go to school in [town]? And long story short, we wound up getting briefly reacquainted. He and my coworker had a band together, just the two of them, which was called Blood Frenzy, because at some point when he was young he'd thought that that would be a good band name and so had kept it in his back pocket just waiting for a chance to name a band all those years.² And so my husband and I wound up seeing a Blood Frenzy show (neither bloody nor particularly frenzied, for the record), and we had a good time, though I quit the job shortly after that, or my coworker did, and so I didn't wind up seeing him again.³ But in any case, I'm going to consider Blood Frenzy as one of my name options.

Okay. So. First to go is Clifford, because I was never a fan of the books (Yes, the dog is big and red. So what?), because Clifford is a single flat red, not red with some orange and a hint of magenta like the flower, and because any red flower being named Clifford after the dog should also be larger than average.

And then we can lose Frilled Lizard too. Even making allowances for whimsy, the resemblance is just not that strong.

All three of the remaining options are sort of problematic. If I look at just the colors, Comsmopolitan is the best match, because I'm not 100% certain what colors any of the Rapa Nui words for "red" are actually referring to, and blood is pretty consistently, you know, blood-colored. Not exactly a match for the flower here.

On the other hand, Blood Frenzy is the most sentimentally appealing, obviously. I have mild negative associations with Cosmopolitan, as an adjective,⁴ beverage,⁵ and magazine⁶ and no emotional reaction to Retoreto at all.

So, since Retoreto isn't the best name of the three by either standard, we can lose it. (Maybe it'll be back next year.) And given the choice between Cosmopolitan and Blood Frenzy, I guess I'm not feeling all that sophisticated. Ergo, Blood Frenzy.

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¹ Because of the colors, obviously. But also the frilled lizard's frills tend to be more horizontal than vertical, and the seedling photos are more vertical than horizontal. For some reason I was imagining it more vertical.
² The internet tells me it is also related to a lot of games, though most of them were created well after the story was supposed to take place. A better bet for the origin of the name is a horror movie from 1987, though I didn't ask.
³ Though, hey, if you're him and you've run across this blog post somehow, get in touch; it'd be fun to hang out sometime. My e-mail's near the top of the sidebar.
⁴ Because it's often contrasted with "rural," "unsophisticated," "country," and the like. I get defensive.
⁵ Because isn't Sex in the City responsible for making cosmopolitans popular? I don't hate the show exactly, but I never really understood why it was a big deal. Surely it wasn't news that sometimes single women had sex, sometimes felt feelings about the sex, and then discussed those feelings with other single women?
⁶ Though I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to mention this series of posts (link probably not safe for work) critiquing the largely-terrible sex and relationship advice to be found in Cosmopolitan. The Pervocracy (link definitely not safe for work) appears to be defunct as of late 2014, so the series is no longer being updated, but some of the cosmocking posts are fun.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium cucullatum

This was tagged as Dendrobium pierardii, and we've seen it as D. pierardii in 2013, but it's an orchid so of course the name's changed.

Don't really have anything new to say about it; I found it less appealing in 2016 than in 2013 but that probably says more about me than about the plant. If you find it interesting, the 2013 post is still relevant (except for the name).

Anthurium no. 0423 "Georgeanne D'Dragon"

All things considered, I'm not too upset with Georgeanne. I mean, considering that she's from one of the "bad" sibling groups,¹ this is pretty good:

Some thrips scarring, sure, but we've seen worse. Similarly, the foliage has a few blemishes, but it's basically okay:

And I'm genuinely pleased with the overall form of the plant, which is pretty compact and seems to be suckering well:

Two and a half weeks after first opening, the bloom looked like this:

And that's still pretty much what it looks like after seven weeks, so at least the bloom is long-lived. Georgeanne isn't the most amazing seedling ever, but there's no compelling reason to throw her out. So she's a keeper for now; I'll revisit the decision later and see how I feel then.

In other Anthurium-seedling news, I finally have a first bud from one of 'Peppermint Gemini's seedlings, 0610 Nina Levin. No sign of speckling so far.

So oh well. I suppose there is technically hope until her spathe opens, but it seems like the bud is large enough now that speckling would be obvious. So oh well. Things are not looking great for the other seedlings of 'Peppermint Gemini' either. [depressing footnote redacted]

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¹ Defined as groups BF ('Gemini' / 23 October 2013) and BH ('White Gemini' / 23 October 2013); not every BF/BH seedling has been awful, but taken as a group they're pretty sucky.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 212

212A is more special than it looks; it's the second of three seedlings so far that weren't sown in 2012.¹ I mean, it's still orange / white and everything, and it's the least interesting of the 2014 batch. But it's okay. Photographs pretty well.

I originally intended to follow standard procedure for naming it -- generate a short list of options and then nitpick them down to one -- but then on Wednesday I ran into a video involving Molly Ivins, and pretty much decided after watching it that this seedling had to be named after her.²

The video is definitely not safe for (most) work. It includes, from the very first second of the video, uncensored shots of anatomically explicit sex toys educational models, adult language, and footage taken from the Texas State Legislature as it deliberated on bills related to the criminalization of sodomy. I mean, that last thing's not especially explicit, but it's awfully embarrassing, and you don't want your co-workers to hear you cringe.

The point is, definitely do watch the video, because the punch line is good,³ but maybe wait until you're home.

Here it is (the main story begins at 3:00; I recommend stopping at 8:17):


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¹ The first being 208A Raspberry Possum. The last was 217A, which will be in the next Schlumbergera post.
² (The name Molly Ivins had previously been considered and rejected for 056A Demons Begone and 089A Halloween Moon. In the first case, I rejected it on the grounds that Ivins' hair was never that orange, and I was holding out for a more color-appropriate seedling; I have decided that I'm not going to let that bother me this time.)
³ Having read the story as written by Ivins long ago, I knew the punchline already, but I was spellbound by the footage from the Texas Lege anyway so I still considered the video worth the time.

Pretty picture: Psychopsis Kalihi alba 'Green Valley'

Not that I hate Psychopsis or anything, but I often feel like I should appreciate them more than I do. I like unusual, and they're unusual. I like striking patterning; they've got striking patterning. They often strike me as not quite finished, though. Is it just me?

Haven't seen this particular flower before, but we saw the non-alba form of Psychopsis Kalihi last year, as well as Psychopsis Mariposa 'Twins', which is Kalihi x Psychopsis papilio. 2012 had another mostly-yellow Psychopsis, Mendenhall alba 'Yellow Butterfly.'

Psychopsis Kalihi = Psychopsis krameriana x Psychopsis papilio (Ref.)

Schlumbergera seedling no. 063

(Potting up the Anthurium seedlings, which I mentioned in the previous post, wound up taking me just under ten hours to do. If you were curious.¹)

The only unusual feature of Schlumbergera seedling 063A is that its petals are a lot more rounded than average. Not super-exciting, but it might be enough to make naming easier. Let's see.

The five-category naming scheme seems to be working well enough for us so far, so let's try that again.

Shape-related: Broad Brush, because of the sort of squared-off ends of the petals. It's a bit of a stretch, I suppose, but my blog, my rules.

Color-related: Robin after the American robin (Turdus migratorius).

Previously considered: Ad Abundantiam, previously (and recently!) considered for seedling 072A Chell.

Pop cultural: Tigger, after the character from the Winnie the Pooh books.²

Whatever: though I am tempted to go with a reference to a famous person I saw on another site semi-recently (Short-Fingered Vulgar Business Yam), I'm hoping that that reference will become so horribly dated by 2018 that no one will even remember who it refers to. So how about the similar but much more pleasant Sweet Potato Pie instead?

For some reason I am afraid that Tigger would get me a cease and desist order from Disney (Disney has owned the rights to Winnie the Pooh since 1961 and are notorious for being aggressively litigious), but even if that's irrational and paranoid of me, Tigger is the Winnie the Pooh character I always related to the least. Much more of an Eeyore here. Which you probably knew already.³ So ennh.

Robin can go too; I like robins fine (and still wonder from time to time how Marcia, Jan, and Cindy are doing, or whether they're even still alive⁴), but an actual robin this color would be alarming; they're a duller, slightly redder orange.

Similarly, Sweet Potato Pie would be more appropriate for a bloom that was a lighter, yellower orange than this, at least going by online photos.⁵

So that leaves Broad Brush and Ad Abundantiam. The former actually does something to describe the seedling in question, whereas the latter could be used for any orange seedling. And we know there's very little chance of making it to June without naming one of them Ad Abundantiam, so I guess we're going with Broad Brush. Not really where I thought this post was going to wind up, but there you go.

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¹ An hour to fill 126 pots with soil and wet the soil down, an hour and a half to do the actual transplanting, an hour to type, print, and cut the text out of the paper for the tags, about two and a half hours to actually make the tags with my poor-man's-laminator, four hours to update the spreadsheets and other records.
² and films, and TV shows, and lunch boxes, and stuffed animals, and pencil-toppers, and Halloween costumes, and video games, and figurines, and dresses, and ceramic wall plaques, and candy, and blankets, and vinyl wall decals, and pacifiers, and Beanie Babies, and bibs, and iPhone chargers, and tote bags, and laundry hampers, and shoes, and cupcake toppers, and stamps, and Q-Tip dispensers, and necklaces, and comb/brush sets, and
³ (thanks for noticing)
⁴ Wikipedia says probably not; average lifespan of a robin is 2 years, and the Brady sisters were hatched 5 years ago. I mean, it's not hopeless -- they're known to occasionally live to be 14, even in the wild -- but odds are pretty good that all three are gone now. *sigh*
⁵ It is distinctly possible that I have never encountered a live sweet potato pie in the wild. We were more of a cake / cookies family than a pie family.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 057 (again)

Well. We all knew this day would come. Eventually, the Anthuriums were going to get distracted for a moment, and then the Schlumbergeras would be back. So brace yourselves, 'cause it's mostly Schlumbergera seedlings from now until mid-May.

Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to come up with a suitable name for this particular seedling:

TinEye has become too repetitive to be useful, but I like the randomness of it. Random-word generators do exist on-line, but I've found them mostly disappointing for name-generation, because so many of the words they come up with are so uncommon or technical that they sort of defeat the purpose of having a memorable, clear moniker for a seedling. I mean, what can you really do with something like Perish Verbarrectus? Nothing, that's what. What I need is a list of random words that's been filtered for me a little bit, to remove jargony words ("enstatolite," "theriolatry," "cholecystonephrostomy"), words with clear meanings but clunky ways of expressing them ("uncomprehendingness," "coadministratrix"), words that are perfectly fine but not great things to name seedlings ("penis," "Nazi," "rotten"), etc.

So I made one. Or, well, I'm in the process of making one. Copied a list of about 240,000 words from the internet, and started sifting through it about three weeks ago, giving thumbs-up or -down on each word individually, which will eventually give me a filtered list useful for naming things. I hope. As of 10 April, I'm only barely more than halfway through it (114,800ish words left to decide on), because that's a hell of a lot of words. I can only do about 2500 or so at a time before my brain blows a tire and I have to do something else for a few hours.

The ultimate goal is to re-sort the list at random and let the novel combinations of words suggest name ideas. Not all of the combinations are useful that way ("thinker harp"), but if I'm in the right mood, the combinations can give interesting mental images, at least, which aren't that far off from the sorts of things I'd get from TinEye. We'll see how it goes once it's all fully operational.

And yes, I am aware of how crazy this sounds. Make comments about how much time I clearly must have on my hands if you must.

Besides the words list, I have previously-rejected names, names I thought of with my own brain like a normal person would name things, and the emergency names list to work with. So. Let's do what we did last time, and limit the options to one name from five different categories.

Shape-related: Voladora (Spanish for flying.¹)

Color-related: Exothermic, the word for chemical reactions that release heat, previously considered for 056 Demons Begone and 089 Halloween Moon.

Previously-considered: Oxomoco, the Aztec deity in charge of night, astrology, the calendar, and agriculture; previously considered for 112 "Lavaball."

Whatever: Aqua Regia, the fuming mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids strong enough to dissolve gold and platinum, which is usually some shade of orange or another.

Pop cultural: That's My Purse. I'd link a video if I could find a decent one, but alas. It comes from King of the Hill, episode 1 of season 6 -- Bobby gets beaten up by some bullies, is encouraged by his father Hank to attend a boxing course at the local YMCA, but the boxing class is full so he attends a women's self-defense course instead, where students are instructed to kick attackers in the groin while yelling "That's My Purse! I don't know you!" Which turns out to be pretty effective against bullies. Pamela Adlon, who voiced Bobby Hill, wound up winning a Primetime Emmy (Outstanding Voice-Over Performance) for this episode.

So. As amusing as That's My Purse is, it's maybe too dependent on knowing the episode it comes from. Not sure it's forever unusable, but I'm thinking I should at least not use it for this particular seedling. And Exothermic always seems good when I'm making the short lists of names, but then it's always one of the least interesting options, so maybe I should stop trying to make Exothermic happen.

The color is maybe a little too red for Aqua Regia -- I don't think I've ever encountered it in person, but most of the on-line photos available show it as more of a yellow-orange than red-orange.

So it's down to Voladora or Oxomoco, and I wish I had more photos to look at. This seedling has only bloomed once, though, so the two pictures in this post are all I have to go on. Based on those, it feels less like "flying" and more like "Aztec agricultural deity," so I think I'm going to go with Oxomoco.

This whole post feels a little rushed, for which I apologize, but as I write this, it's 12:27 PM on Sunday and I still intend to pot up another 126 Anthurium seedlings today (fill pots, transplant seedlings, make tags, update spreadsheets, etc.). That will take at least six hours to do, probably more like nine, so I've probably already dedicated more time to this naming decision than I had to spare.

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¹ Also hanging in the air, blowing up with gunpowder, a rocket, or a flying fish, according to the link. They all kind of work.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Winwine x fairrieanum

Paphiopedilum Winston Churchill (seed parent for Paph. Winwine) must be a magical paph to breed with, because it seems like he's everywhere.

• Paph. Cheryl Ann Boyd
• Paph. (Adam Hausermann x Winston Churchill)
• Paph. Keyeshill

And that's just so far. There'll be a fifth Winston Churchill cross in the 25 December post. Not sure if there are others. Probably. Lots of Paphiopedilums this year.

Not really seeing the influence here, but then this plant is only 1/4 Winston Churchill, so I suppose I wouldn't necessarily. I'm more surprised that it doesn't especially resemble the pollen parent, Paph. fairrieanum, which is fairly light-colored, with purple and/or green veining. There were a lot of fairrieanum hybrids in the show this year, it seemed like (you'll see two more this year), and none of them particularly resembled it, nor have the fairrieanum hybrids from past shows:

• Paph. Jade Dragon (though note that the ID is uncertain)
• Paph. Faire-Maud
• Paph. Golden Crest

I mean, yeah, recessive, dominant, Punnett squares, I get it. It's just that usually there's enough of a resemblance to be able to say oh, yeah, that kind of makes sense, I guess, and with this particular plant there's not.

Wherever it comes from, it's lovely, and I approve of it.

Paphiopedilum Winwine: Paphiopedilum Winston Churchill x Paphiopedilum Joanne's Wine (Ref.)