Schlumbergera seedling no. 122

Another seedling with only one bloom all season, but I got multiple photos of it, at least.

122 isn't very interesting; I don't mind the white ones, but it's hard to get excited about them either. The only variation in color is in how much pink there is on the "tube," and I suspect that that is probably determined by temperature anyway. (There is occasionally some variability in flower shape, though at least some of that is environmental as well. Also sometimes determined by the angle at which I'm taking the photo.)

A special problem with 122A is that I already know what I'm going to name it, because I just like one of the names that much more than the others. I mean, we'll go ahead and look at the list of names, because it's something to talk about, but don't expect me to act like there's any suspense here.

The list: Coconut Shavings, Lyle Lovett, Myrtha, Tickly-Benders.

Coconut Shavings is, I think, pretty self-explanatory: the color and slight translucence of the petals is similar to that of coconut shavings.

(While I'm here, I feel like I should also note that despite the recent faddishness of coconut oil, it isn't especially "healthy." If you want saturated fat, eat butter. Food is not magic; nothing you eat will prevent your eventual mortality; coconut oil as a health food is a scam, and in 10 years the people currently telling you it's healthy will claim they always knew it was basically lard in a fibrous woody shell.¹)

Lyle Lovett was previously considered for 112A Lavaball, 128A Sloths Arrive Late, and 290A Our Lady Of Assumption, and was respectively rejected because 1) the name works better for a white seedling, 2) it's probably a good idea not to name seedlings for living people if there's a chance they might turn out to be horrible, and 3) it was up against a name I preferred. Being up against a better name is why it's going to fail for a fourth time.

Myrtha was suggested last June by an anonymous commenter:

May i suggest Giselle or Myrtha for another white flower? These are both characters from the ballet giselle where spirits of rejected women (called wilis) curse any trespassing men to dance until they die (as you do in a ballet). Myrtha is the queen of the wilis and is stumped when giselle steps forward to protect a count from certain death.

I'll probably use the name eventually, but not for this one.

I'm going with Tickly-Benders, yet another term from the dialect dictionary. It describes thin ice (like on a pool or small lake) which is strong enough to hold a person without breaking, but thin enough that it bends under their weight, and also the act of walking on such ice. There are a number of variations on the term, including one I actually like better,² but "tickly-benders" seems to be the most widely used. I'm charmed both by the term itself, and by the implication that this was a common enough recreational activity to warrant having a term for.

It doesn't hurt that the photos I have of the flower involve a lot of petals that are curved and bent in unusual ways, making it feel even more appropriate, though later blooms probably won't look the same. In any case, this one's going to be 122A Tickly-Benders.

-

¹ Coconut water, on the other hand, may be fine; it sort of depends on what you'd be drinking otherwise. If you're replacing water with coconut water, you're not doing yourself any favors. If you're replacing soda with coconut water, good for you, that's a step in the right direction. Coconut water doesn't give you anything you're not already getting elsewhere, but it's not as sugary as juice or soda, so go for it, I guess.
Coconut water does not hydrate you any more / better / faster than regular water -- I'd even question whether "more / better / faster hydration" is a valid concept in the first place. (If your body needs water, maybe . . . give it water?)
Also coconut water is grotesquely overpriced for what it is. If you are overburdened with money and need to burn some of it to feel better about yourself or healthier or whatever, the donate button is in the sidebar, at the top of the post.
Unless you're reading this on a phone, in which case I have no idea where the donate button is.
² ("Kittly-benders")

Schlumbergera seedling no. 062 (again)

Yet again: one bloom, one photo.

Also: not entirely sure that this is a separate seedling from 062A Open World. It looks pretty different, but when I check all the photos I've gotten from pot 062, there are some flowers with colors intermediate between 062A and 062B. The one in this post is substantially different from the average bloom, but I don't know if it's actually a separate seedling. So whatever name I come up with here might have to be dropped and recycled at some point in the future.

It's really striking, at least, whether it's new and awesome or old and variable:

And the name finalists are: Charo, Pure Energy, Royal Grandma, Underestimated.

Charo has previously been considered for seedling 066B Sigrid the Haughty; that was totally the correct decision, since I think Sigrid the Haughty is my favorite name of all the seedlings ever.¹ But it would make me sad if the world forgot about Charo, so I'd like to do my part to prevent that, sooner or later.

There's more to Pure Energy than it appears; it's one of the names intended to honor someone from my life. Previously considered for 011A Annie Lennox, and rejected because, based on image searches, it seems most people associate "pure energy" with blues and purples, plus Annie Lennox is just cool.² But this is certainly a very energetic-looking flower, and the magenta may be as close as I'm going to get to purple. So maybe.

Royal Grandma is a slanted reference to a fish, Gramma loreto, known commonly as the "royal gramma." They're insanely pretty and appear to be good in salt-water aquaria.³ Royal grammas don't exactly match the colors of the flower, but that's okay, I figure, since Royal Grandma doesn't exactly match the name of the fish.

Underestimated is just a reference to the fact that I hadn't thought 062A Open World was that impressive -- it was fine, but nothing we haven't seen before -- and now 062B is really striking.

So okay. Drop Underestimated; it's not wrong, but it's abstract and boring. And the uncertainty about whether this is a separate seedling or not makes me want to hold off on Charo as well, on the grounds that Charo surely deserves a real, confirmed, distinct seedling of her own.

Which leaves Pure Energy and Royal Grandma, and Pure Energy has the same problem as Charo -- the person it refers to is a big deal, and deserves a distinct seedling. So this one will have to be 062B Royal Grandma, at least until I figure out whether or not it's separate from 062A Open World.

-

¹ Though 056A Demons Begone, 106A Jaws Of Elmo, 127A Cooperating Banjos, 132A Pointy Space Princess, 244A That's My Purse, and 271A Not Here To Make Friends are all way up there on the list too.
² Annie Lennox is, in fact, so cool that I have more than once caught myself thinking, oh, I should name a seedling for Annie Lennox -- after I already have.
³ I've never had a salt-water aquarium before, salt-water tanks being way more complicated and expensive than I've ever wanted to deal with (also, for obvious reasons, salt-water fish are not available in Iowa all that often, and when they are they're generally not in great health), but as a kid I was periodically obsessed with books about fish. There was one book about salt-water tropical fish that I checked out of the local library so often that it's entirely possible I was the only person who ever got to.
The royal gramma is one of the few species I still remember from the book, along with moorish idol (Zanclus cornutus), sergeant major (Abudefduf saxatilis), and powder blue tang (Acanthurus leucosternon). Plus of course clownfish (particularly Amphiprion ocellaris), who already have a seedling.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 250

I'm only just now noticing that most of the early-blooming seedlings from the 2017-18 season only produced one bloom. (I think 044A Iktsuarpok is the only exception so far?) I don't think previous years were like this, so it must mean something. Not necessarily something worth caring about, but something.

Anyway. So seedling 250A is another one of those: only one bloom. It's mostly interesting for its second-generation ancestry; it's another of the seedlings from 025A Clownfish.¹

Name finalists: Apple Chankings, Glede, Maraschino, and Pat Benatar.

Apple Chankings is another term from the dialect dictionary I referred to in the post for 095A Pele's Lipstick. "Chankings" are the remains of a piece of fruit, like an apple, that are discarded and not eaten. The term seems to have been most widespread in northeastern New England. It's not really an appealing image for a flower, but I love that there's a term for this and that it sounds comical, so we'll at least consider it.

A Glede is a live (burning) coal, in the dialect of 1930s Pennsylvania. It's in modern dictionaries as a name for birds of prey generally, and the European kite (Milvus milvus) in particular. No idea if the two uses of the word are connected at all; the dialect book doesn't include any information about word origins.

Maraschino is in reference to the cherry, but it's sort of complicated: the original maraschino cherry was a sour cherry from the Marasca region in modern Croatia, and "maraschino" was the liqueur produced by distilling Marasca cherries, hence the name. Then somebody got the idea to preserve Marasca cherries by putting them in maraschino, and then people started cutting corners and preserving other varieties of cherries in maraschino liqueur, and eventually the term degenerated to the point where it was used for cherries preserved in pretty much anything, whether it contained alcohol or not.

Wikipedia says that in the U.S., maraschino cherries pretty much never involved cherries from Marasca in the first place (there only being just so many cherry trees in Marasca), and then when Prohibition began in 1920, cherries preserved in alcohol were no longer legal. So other processes for preserving cherries were developed, and then when Prohibition was lifted, for some reason the FDA redefined "maraschino cherry" to mean "cherries which have been dyed red, impregnated with sugar, and packed in a sugar syrup flavored with oil of bitter almonds or a similar flavor," possibly because that's what everybody had gotten used to during Prohibition.

So maraschino cherries aren't Maraschino cherries. Odds are you've never had actual Maraschino cherries.

And Pat Benatar is just kind of awesome, or at least was the last time I checked, last year, when I considered naming seedling 198A Prophecy Of Joy after her. Rejected the name then because I felt like she deserved a more impressive flower. Not sure that 250A is that much better, honestly, but let's see how it goes.

This one is actually tough, because I kind of like and dislike all the options about equally.

I feel like Pat Benatar wants a redder flower than this, and we have a few of those coming up (241A feels like it would be an especially good fit). Plus I'm always worried about living celebrities suddenly becoming horrible for no reason.² So we'll postpone Pat Benatar for a while.

And as much as I love that there's a term for it, Apple Chankings is maybe not a concept I want to associate with any of the seedlings, so I'll drop that one too. Though if I need a name for a crappy red seedling someday, I suppose I've got something that might work.

Which leaves Glede and Maraschino. And although I'd rather have a Maraschino, because the word is more fun, I think, again, that it needs a redder flower than this. Glede works fine for anything in this general color neighborhood, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the connection to birds of prey; bird-related names pretty much always work for Schlumbergera. So, *shrug*, 250A Glede.

-

¹ The other named ones were: 239A Plow The Seashore, 240A Schwa, and 244A That's My Purse. A few others will be receiving names later this year (237A, 241A, 248A, 252A).
² Though that seems not to have happened to Benatar. Probably she's safe.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 044

This one's been around for quite a while, as you can tell from the low seedling number, and it's one of the seedlings from the NOID peach, which is still mildly unusual.¹ It did manage to produce a fair number of blooms, once it got going, though I think I only got photos of the first one. The blooms are unusual in a couple ways: one, although most of the white-blooming seedlings produce some pink at the base of the petals (what I refer to as "the tube," though there's probably a more precise technical term for it), 044A had consistent, intense pink there. Two, the flowers were a bit smaller than average. At least two other seedlings this year produced unusually little blooms (248A and 272A); I'm unsure why.

Our name finalists: Iktsuarpok, Ice Castle, Jellybean Cake, White-Knuckle.

Iktsuarpok is an Inuit word that I found via one of those articles about words with no good English equivalents (specifically this one²). It's the feeling of anticipating someone's arrival to the point of checking and rechecking to see whether or not they've arrived yet.

Ice Castle is a name I've kind of liked for a while,³ that seems suitable for a white seedling.

Jellybean Cake is one of those names that I don't explain because they reference a particular person from my life.

White-Knuckle is the idiom, chosen mostly just because it includes "white," and the seedling is partly white.

First one to go will be White-Knuckle. It seems especially inappropriate for a seedling with this much pink in it, for one thing; for another, I just know it'll get this song stuck in my head all the time:⁴


and that would be intolerable.⁵

And then Ice Castle, too, seems better suited for a pure white flower.

So Iktsuarpok, or Jellybean Cake. Both suit the flower well -- I had been waiting a while to see a bloom from this seedling, and consequently had checked it several times in the past to see whether it was producing buds; the situation referenced in Jellybean Cake involved a jellybean which was either white or pink,⁶ so a flower that is both colors works either way.

Both are also slightly problematic: Iktsuarpok is awkward to pronounce and type; Jellybean Cake makes me think of a rectangular block of jellybeans mashed together, maybe with frosting on top, which is not what the name is supposed to evoke.⁷

I'm going to go with Iktsuarpok, because the situation it refers to (checking and rechecking to see whether a seedling has bloomed yet) is more specific and less common than having a bloom that is both white and pink (which has happened with most of the white-blooming seedlings to one degree or another). So: 044A Iksuarpok. I'm sure once I've practiced pronouncing it in my head enough times (ick-tsu-AR-pock? maybe?), it'll seem like a real word.

-

¹ Although I'm fairly certain that the first 114 seedlings were all from a mutual cross of 'Caribbean Dancer' with the NOID peach, they've performed very differently, depending on which seed parent they had. The seedlings from 'Caribbean Dancer' have mostly been pretty robust and quick to bloom; the ones from the NOID peach have grown more slowly, took longer to produce blooms, and seem more prone to producing misshapen stems or flowers or both. This has been less of a problem with the second batch of seedlings from the NOID peach, but they're still often a little weird, as you'll see if and when we get to seedling 143A. I don't have any idea why this would be the case.
² We may wind up seeing a second word from that list later this year; the Japanese "boketto" (staring vacantly into the distance, without thinking). I feel like English actually does have a concise term for this ("spacing out"), but maybe there are nuances. Who am I to argue with Mental Floss?
Boketto doesn't have any particular connection to the Schlumbergera seedlings, but we're still watching Dynasty, and Krystle Carrington, in particular, still does this a lot, so it's on my mind. And it's a pretty-sounding word.
³ (considered and rejected for seedlings 074B Crone Island, 119A There Would Be Peace, and 290A Our Lady Of Assumption)
⁴ I had a phase a while back where I was watching a lot of Ok Go videos; "White Knuckles" was easily the worst earworm.
⁵ Also I've been trying not to assign names that have the bloom color in them: White Knight, Orange Crush, Red Queen, etc. I may eventually have to break the rule, but I don't have to yet.
⁶ It was a long time ago, and I can't remember; if forced to guess, I'd guess white.
⁷ The mental process being that a "jellybean cake" is a cake made of compressed jellybeans, in the same way that a "fruitcake" is a cake made of compressed dried fruit. The actual moment being referenced involved a perfectly normal piece of sheet cake, with green frosting, which had a single jellybean on top.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 098 (again)

Seedling 098B is yet another orange / pink, not incredibly interesting in context of all the other orange / pinks, but it's pretty. I'm fairly certain that it's not the same seedling as 098A Hunting Tutu; although they're both orange, and although the orange-blooming seedlings can be frustratingly inconsistent from one flower to the next, the yellowish-orange / pink ones like this seedling¹ don't fluctuate: if the plant produces one yellow-orange bloom, then they're all going to be yellow-orange.^{2, 3}

Because it's still orange, though, it poses certain challenges for naming purposes, and apparently when I was coming up with the name finalists I felt especially frustrated about this, because I came up with: Have Mercy, I Get It, Lady Trieu, and Take A Hint.

Three of those are, I think, obvious enough that they don't need to be unpacked. Lady Trieu, though, is an interesting historical figure, and we can afford to spend a little time on her.⁴

She's basically a (the?) national hero of Vietnam. Officially she's honored for leading the resistance to the Chinese in 248 AD (a resistance which didn't last all that long, but was remarkable for working at all, considering how badly outnumbered the Vietnamese side was), but she's also been mythologized quite a bit, and those stories are pretty remarkable. Basically she was the Vietnamese Joan of Arc, except without the religious stuff,⁵ and also she was nine feet tall and had three breasts, which were so long that she had to throw them over her shoulder in order to fight, and she was breathtakingly gorgeous and went into battle in brilliant golden robes, mounted on an elephant, and so forth. It's all very dramatic and visual. Somebody should make a movie.⁶

I didn't wind up with nearly as much time to research as I was expecting to have, though there doesn't seem to be a lot of information available about her as a historical figure, either. So I'll recommend Wikipedia, and two other sites, the last of which is the most entertainingly written and includes links to two additional sites.

But so back to the seedling. I figure the three "enough already with the orange" names are similar enough that I can eliminate two of them without thinking too hard about it. Because Netflix has finally gotten the fourth season of Z Nation,⁷ one of the promotional tag lines for which is Have Mercy, I'm inclined to keep that one and drop the other two.

Which means we're stuck with a choice between a name I can't actually pronounce with any confidence, can't spell without copy-pasting from the Wikipedia article, and has associations with a color the seedling doesn't actually produce (Lady Trieu), and a name that's unpleasantly close to an existing name (Have Mercy, which overlaps 176A The Quality Of Mercy). Both are problems, but one's clearly more of a problem than the other, so I guess we're looking at 098B Have Mercy.

Not sure if I can bring Lady Trieu back to try again or not: I'm not likely to get a brilliant yellow bloom from the Schlumbergeras no matter what I do, and even if I wind up confident about the pronunciation at some point down the road, it's still going to be a problem for everybody else if it doesn't sound like "Tree-oo," which is what I'm guessing most native English speakers would come up with. (Maybe "Tree-ow," once in a while.) So. But hey, at least you got to hear about her.

-

¹ (and 012A Sofa Fort, 013A Tantalus, and 113A Helper Dog)
² Unlike the medium oranges and pinkish-oranges, which seem to turn lighter or darker, redder or less red, pinker or less pink, as the spirit moves them. Combine this with the fact that the same pot can have multiple seedlings -- which may themselves be fluctuating in unknowable schlumbergery ways -- and it's a wonder I have any idea what color any of the seedlings are.
Yes, the adjectival form of "Schlumbergera" is "schlumbergery." Because I say so.
³ There will actually be another case of this later in the year, with pot 019: 019A Belevenissen took over most of the pot and has grown pretty well, but it's apparently left just enough space for a tiny second seedling to grow, and that one has bloomed for the first time this year. Luckily, 019A and 019B flowered simultaneously, so I was able to directly compare the flowers, and they're definitely not the same seedling.
⁴ Though I am slightly butchering her name because the Vietnamese alphabet is a mess of digraphs and diacritical marks which doesn't lend itself to easy, fast typing. Also I'm not confident that everyone reading this will be able to reproduce the special characters involved. Officially, though, it's Lady Triệu, with a circumflex above the "e" and a dot underneath it.
One consequence of this is that I have no idea how to pronounce her name. The Wikipedia article on the Vietnamese alphabet was surprisingly unhelpful. One of my sources suggests "Jeu Tea Gin" or "Jeu Tea Chin" as an approximate pronunciation, but I have no idea whether this is accurate or not.
⁵ One assumes she was probably religious to some degree or another, just not in a particularly Joan-of-Arc way. Also, "Joan of Arc" + "Vietnamese" = "Lady Trieu" is obviously a really rough approximation, but it's a comparison made by a lot of the sites that write about her, so I'm going with it anyway.
⁶ No, seriously: someone should make this movie.
⁷ Both better than it looks and far superior to The Walking Dead; I bounced hard off of the first episode and had to be convinced to give it a second chance, but I've been glad I did.
To be sure, "superior to The Walking Dead" isn't a high bar to clear -- I stuck with it way longer than was enjoyable for me, but then the episode "Twice As Far" (episode 14 of season six) happened and I threw up my hands in exasperation and have never gone back. Which from what I have heard about season seven was the right call.
Z Nation is at once much more absurd, realistic, and hopeful than The Walking Dead. I mean, yes, you get people who turn blue, and a remarkable scene involving a wheel of cheese. But at the same time, it's not 107 episodes of meeting people and then watching them die horrible deaths at one another's hands.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 095 (again)

095B is the first good seedling of the year. It's not doing anything new, and it didn't do enough (only got one bloom), but it's a less common color than 018B Fifth-Year Senior, and it photographed better than 069B I Think She Likes Me, so "good" feels justified.

It's also going to be a problem to name, because I like three out of the four choices very much and will be sad to give up two of them. They are:

Carrie Fisher. You know who Carrie Fisher is. I'm maybe a little hesitant to use the name, because the last time I named a seedling after a recently deceased female celebrity (042A Mary Tyler Moore), the seedling started to fall apart shortly thereafter. But I'm only a little hesitant.¹

Come To Fetch Fire will need some explaining. Many years ago, I was at a public library that was selling off some of their old books, and I found a book that had compiled descriptions of local dialect from the U.S. and Canada.² An awful lot of the book is devoted to alternate pronunciations, which aren't useful for our purposes, but it also includes some local expressions and slang, mostly from the 1930s, which very much are. So you're going to see a lot of American Dialect Dictionary stuff this year. Come To Fetch Fire is, according to the book, a Southern U.S. idiom for "to come & leave at once."³

Pele's Lipstick was proposed by reader Paul in the comments for seedling 217A Blood Frenzy, and then I considered it for 094A Some Clowns, but I was unsure about 094A's quality, so I decided to save the name for a more solid seedling.⁴ Is this one that seedling? We'll find out soon enough.

And then We're All Still Here, which has personal significance to me, but I'm not going to explain it.

First one to go is We're All Still Here, mostly because the other three are all a lot more visual. And we can lose Carrie Fisher (for now; she'll come back) on the grounds that the other names kind of have to be in the red or orange neighborhood, but a "Carrie Fisher" could be any color, and might actually make more sense as a white seedling, given that she wore white for one of her more famous roles.⁵

So, Come To Fetch Fire or Pele's Lipstick?

Well. Come To Fetch Fire does make more sense for a fiery-colored seedling that's only bloomed once. And the fact that it's only bloomed once also means that the overall quality of the seedling is difficult to gauge. If I didn't want to name 094A Pele's Lipstick because I wasn't sure if it was a good seedling or not, then maybe I should hold off on it for this seedling as well.

On the other hand, even if it's only bloomed one time so far, this seedling is really likely to produce another bloom at some point, at which time Come To Fetch Fire will make less sense. And the first bloom wasn't notably short-lived or anything. I've been hanging on to the name Pele's Lipstick for a couple years now, I like it better, it's slightly shorter to type, and it's even more visual, so I think this one is 095B Pele's Lipstick even despite the reasons why Come To Fetch Fire makes more sense. They're my seedlings, and I can be as arbitrary about their names as I want. So there.

-

¹ It doesn't look good for Mary, though. I haven't officially thrown 042A out yet, but we're at the point where I probably ought to. In which case I should recycle the name, because she's the patron saint of the blog and everything.
² (Harold Wentworth. American Dialect Dictionary. Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1944.)
³ It's also possible that it's a widespread contemporary phrase that I've somehow missed hearing; one of the surprising things about reading the book cover to cover is that some of these local words and idioms took off and became part of everyday American speech. So if you're reading the whole book, you're constantly bouncing back and forth between why is that in here? That's not local dialect; everybody says that to oh my god, this is like slang from another planet, that's so cool.
The point being that although I was unfamiliar with some of the terms, they might be perfectly ordinary, everyday language to you.
The dictionary usually doesn't explain the origin of the term; the mental image I formed for "come to fetch fire" is of someone whose fire at home has gone out, so they go to get a burning coal from someone else, and can't stay at the other person's place or else the ember will die. This may or may not have anything to do with the actual origin.
⁴ An instinct which turned out to be correct: Some Clowns hasn't been doing well this year either. A big chunk of the plant shriveled and dropped off a couple months ago. Though at least it hasn't all died.
⁵ And oh my goodness are we going to have some white seedlings to name, later on. So many white seedlings. Never ever cross a white Schlumbergera with anything, unless you're looking to breed the perfect white Schlumbergera.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 069 (again)

For whatever reason, the first four seedlings to bloom for the first time this year were "B" seedlings (i.e., they were the second seedling to bloom from the pot they were in). I'm not 100% certain that 018B (previously) and 098B are separate seedlings, but 069B and 095B definitely were. So let's take a look at 069B.

It's only bloomed once this year. The red/pink seedlings (like 054A Helpful Gesture, 078A Art Party, 103B Must Be Love, and 244A That's My Purse) are usually reluctant bloomers. The only exceptions I can think of are 099B Karma Cobra, and maybe 208A Raspberry Possum, though Raspberry Possum is still a very moody bloomer -- some years I get nothing, some years I get a reasonable number of flowers. So there's a good chance that this one bloom is all 069B will give me this year.

The four name finalists are:

I Think She Likes Me, which is a song title (from Treat Her Right) but also works fine if you don't know the song. Song lyrics or titles are always risky for me, because I can get the song stuck in my head every time I read the name, but I don't think I'd be too upset to have this one stuck in my head.

Old Dog New Tricks, which is just a reference to being one of the "B" seedlings.

Pink Disco Trilobite, previously considered for 074A Vroom, 208A Raspberry Possum, and 089B Haunted Houseboat. Doesn't really make sense, except insofar as trilobites are/were neat and there's pink in the flower. I don't know why I keep coming back to this one, but apparently some part of my brain likes it. (And as far as it goes, it would probably have been better for seedling 208A than "Raspberry Possum." Sometimes I pick the wrong name.)

What About The Love was also previously considered (for 178A Lulu's Night Off); it's a song reference as well.

I'm not thrilled with any of these names, but the rules of the game say I have to pick one, so let's start eliminating.

I'm going to drop Old Dog New Tricks, because "dog" references have previously been used for seedlings that seemed inferior.¹ 069B isn't fantastic or anything, but it's probably not a dog. Hell, most of the "dogs" haven't even been dogs.²

And I'd feel better about Pink Disco Trilobite if I knew that this was a particularly good seedling. I like the name, I should like the seedling that gets it. So, one name is gone because the seedling wasn't bad enough to deserve it, and now one name is dropped because the seedling wasn't good enough.

Which leaves us with I Think She Likes Me and What About The Love, and . . . well, as important as I think the message of What About The Love is, I also suspect that the name will depress me every time I read it, because it's sad that it's necessary to remind people of that. If that makes sense. Which it probably doesn't. So by process of elimination, we have 069B I Think She Likes Me. Not super satisfying, but there wasn't an option I was going to be 100% happy with, so I guess I can live with it.

-

¹ 060A Wet Dog, 084A Downward-Facing Dog, 113A Helper Dog.
² As it turns out, Downward-Facing Dog is normal, neither especially bad nor especially good, and Helper Dog turned out to be pretty neat. Don't know how Wet Dog turned out; a reader asked for it, so I sent it to them, and that's the last I heard about it.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 018 (again)

Ever since the Schlumbergera seedlings began to bloom, I have regretted planting multiple seedlings in the same pot. It's especially annoying with plants whose blooms vary according to environmental conditions during development, and seedlings coming from the same cross, because I can never tell whether I'm looking at a single variable seedling or two different but really similar seedlings. This year, I've had to make corrections in both directions: I decided that 057A Pyrotechnic was the same as 057B Oxomoco, so the latter officially no longer exists, and I've also decided that 010A Semantic Satiation is probably two separate seedlings, so you'll wind up seeing me name 010B later, even though it's been blooming for three years already and I'm sure I've posted photos of it before.

018B is another one of these problematic cases. On the one hand, 018A Nudibranch has bloomed quite a bit, and seemed to be pretty consistent: soft orange petals with a white "tube." This year, for the first time, I got a bloom that was more of a red-orange, with a pink tube,

on a separate stem that hadn't bloomed before, which makes it seem like a separate seedling. On the other hand, that coloration has only appeared once so far, and a stem belonging to 018A has subsequently produced something very similar, just not quite as red/pink:

(018A Nudibranch, 12 October 2017)
And that's pretty damn similar.

So, we're starting the season with a pretty low-pressure naming situation, because there's a good chance that I'll decide later that 018B is the same plant as 018A, and I'll wind up dropping whatever name I give this one.

It seemed to work okay last year to narrow the initial list down to four names and then choose from among those, so that's what I'm going to do this year as well, unless that becomes a problem somehow. The finalists are: Also Included, But You Might Like It, Fifth-Year Senior, and Maudlin.

Also Included is pretty self-explanatory, I think? Basically just saying that this one's pretty unremarkable.

But You Might Like It is a reference to a family story. I think it's natural, when reading it without knowing the reference, to put the emphasis on "Like," but I mean for it to have the emphasis on "You." The story is: when I was a kid, my family attended a church that was a pretty long drive from where we lived, and although they had potluck dinners after the morning services from time to time, we didn't usually participate because of that. Making the drive was effort enough without having to cook something and transport it to the church too. So one day after church, one of the members of the church, a woman, was talking to Mom and Dad about staying for the potluck, and Mom and Dad were like, well, but we didn't bring anything, it'd be weird, and the woman said something like, I'm sure I've got something at home that you could take with you, just come home with me for a little bit and I'll give you something, we'll say you made it, it'll be fine.¹

So. We go to her place, and she throws a couple prepared but uncooked pies in the oven, and everybody talks for a while or whatever, and loses track of time a little bit. When she thinks to open the oven again, one (or maybe both?) of the pies has burned. And in the version of the story my parents tell, then, the lady goes on and on to her husband about how the pie is ruined, and she could never serve anything like this to people in the church, it would be so embarrassing, what are they going to do. And then at some point she stops talking about how terribly unacceptable the pie is, turns to my parents, and says brightly, well but you guys might like it.

Which I gather stung Mom and Dad a bit at the time, and maybe a little bit still, but they also think it's funny, and I figure there's little chance of the pie-baker ever seeing this post so I don't feel bad about sharing the story.² Mom is pretty clear that the woman didn't have any idea what she'd said, what the implications of it were, which makes it both better and worse.

Fifth-Year Senior is just a reference to how much time it took for the seedling to produce a bloom, if it is in fact a separate seedling.

Maudlin is also intended to honor a specific person from my life;³ I don't think he was generally using the word correctly,⁴ but he used it a lot, and I can't hear it without thinking of him. And the flower looks kind of frazzled in a way that could be depression, I guess, if flowers can be depressed, so.

First name to drop is Also Included. It's fine, especially since there's a good chance that I'll decide 018B isn't a separate seedling in the next couple years, but it's vague and abstract and all three of the others are more interesting.

And then Maudlin isn't great. I mean, if anything, when I look at that first photo, with the petals looking all pointy and windblown, I see angry or hurried a lot more than weepy.

So that comes down to But You Might Like It or Fifth-Year Senior, and that choice is basically a choice between marking the seedling as "inferior but potentially enjoyable" or "slower to complete than expected." And I think the latter is more specific to the seedling. There's nothing obviously inferior about 018B, and I kind of like But You Might Like It better as a name. It might be better to hold on to that one for a later seeding, one where the name has a better chance of sticking.

So, officially, this one is to be known as 018B Fifth-Year Senior, unless and until such time as it becomes clear that it's actually just more 018A Nudibranch.

-

¹ Why not just say oh honey, you're a member of the church too; nobody cares about the rule, just come anyway, it'll be fine? I don't know. I mean, you'd think that that would be more acceptable than lying, in church, even if it was a lie about something so inconsequential that it couldn't possibly have mattered to anyone. But then, you'd also think that if it was so inconsequential, it would never have occurred to anyone not to just tell the truth: the Subjunctives weren't planning to stay, so I just brought twice as much! or something.
Whatever the reasoning, it's clear that to this lady, thou shalt bring food to a church potluck rates slightly higher, commandment-wise, than thou shalt not bear false witness. Moving on.
² Even if she did see this post, I figure the odds of her remembering the incident and identifying herself as a part of it are pretty slim.
³ I mean, "honor" might not be quite the right word to use for But You Might Like It. Perhaps "remember." Though "remember" makes it sound like she's dead, and as far as I know she's still alive, so that's still not quite right. "Pay tribute to?"
⁴ It actually means something like "embarrassingly and/or tearfully sentimental due to drunkenness;" he tended to use it as "depressed out of proportion to the circumstances," whether there'd been drinking or not. Which is not quite incorrect, but is pretty far from what online dictionaries will tell you.