Schlumbergera seedling no. 083

This is the seedling we've all been waiting for. I mean, #025 "Clownfish" is great, #054 "Helpful Gesture" is unexpectedly pleasant as well, #057 "Pyrotechnic" has been growing on me, and there are a decent number of keepers in the bunch overall. But this one is perhaps actually something special.

In fact, it's special enough that I can't quite settle on a name.

TinEye had lots of the usual red / orange / pink stuff -- cars and car parts (I had no idea that people were so into taking pictures of tail light replacement lenses), leaves, flowers -- and the only thing that was coming up more often than normal were images of parades. Lots of costumed dancers from Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, that sort of thing. Also there were one or two shots from burlesque shows. But I feel like this deserves something more . . . distinct.

It colored up pretty dramatically as it opened: the above two photos were taken only a day apart.

Close-up, this is the most amazing Schlumbergera I have ever seen. From further away, the magenta and orange kind of blur together to make red. But the petals actually do shade through white, orange, red, and magenta. If this is a normal and common thing for Schlumbergera petals to do, I apologize for my enthusiasm, but I've somehow missed noticing it before.

The only bad characteristic of the blooms is that there aren't very many of them. How many? Just the one in the photos. There are no buds in progress. Granted, the plant is still young, and it didn't have a great environment for trying to bloom this year -- late repotting, limited light, dry air -- so presumably the next time will be better. Or at least we can hope.

So anyway. I've spent an absurd amount of time in search of a name, and the best I've been able to come up with thus far is a Beavis and Butthead reference: "Uh Hey Baby." This almost works for me -- it sounds stupid, yes, but that was pretty much what my inner Butthead said when I saw it opened for the first time, so it seems right somehow. The downside of this is that much of the charm of "Uh Hey Baby" is the way Butthead pronounces "baby" when he says it, and it wouldn't really make any sense to people who aren't familiar with the show. Not that making sense to people is necessarily a high priority for variety names of plants anyway, as we've seen over the years, with the orchids. I don't know.

Also under consideration to some degree or another, in order from least to most appealing:

"Burlesque" (yawn)
"Night Cheese" (a 30 Rock reference, which is pleasingly nonsensical but mostly serves as a reminder that when brainstorming Schlumbergera names, there are no bad ideas)
"Rainbow Sherbet" (there actually is a company making a white, orange, and purple sherbet,¹ and it was a favorite of mine as a child. I've even mentioned it on the blog before. Alas, there's already a Hibiscus 'Rainbow Sherbet,' and the colors of the Schlumbergera don't match the colors of the sherbet particularly well.²)
"Saint Beavis" (I don't know where this one came from. It was apparently important to me at one time to have a Beavis and Butthead connection. Incidentally, there are "Saint Beavis" t-shirts available for sale on-line. Which raises more questions than it answers.)
"Tamika Flynn" (a Welcome to Night Vale reference, which has going for it that: Tamika is at least the sort of person who should be getting things named for her, and the name is not particularly ridiculous if you don't know who Tamika is. Problems: she's not a particularly major character and it's not a particularly major show, so most people would not get the reference, and if nobody's going to get the reference then I should maybe not bother.)
"Breakin' the Law" (also B&B-related, but a Judas Priest reference before that. I kind of like this just because the seedling is doing something that I didn't know Schlumbergeras could do, so it seems semi-appropriate.)
"Sweetie Darling" (an Absolutely Fabulous reference, with all the same problems as "Uh Hey Baby" plus the problem that it sounds a little overly precious. In the show, it works because you know Edina doesn't remotely mean it; out of context, it sounds cloying and gross to me. It's nevertheless probably the strongest contender I have after "Uh Hey Baby.")

I'm not in love with any of these options, so if there's something you've always wanted to see a plant named, throw it out there. No bad ideas in brainstorming, I might like it, etc. Or cast a vote for one of the other options. Otherwise I'm probably going to default to "Uh Hey Baby."


Seedling #083 also has a plain orange seedling in it. If not for its proximity to the most amazing seedling to date, #083B would seem pleasant enough.

TinEye gave me at least one photo of a bonfire, so I'm going with "Guy Fawkes Night" for the name.

More seedlings to come, though the three I know about at the moment are all varying shades of orange, so the remaining posts will probably be anticlimactic. Prepare yourself accordingly.

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¹ Though I think the name "rainbow" is pushing it, if you've only got three colors involved and one of them is white.
² (Not that that stopped the Hibiscus people. Should also note that the Hibiscus name has no actual relevance: the same name can be used for multiple genera as far as I know. But again, we're going for something *special* with this one, so if someone's already used it for something else, that makes it a lot less appealing to me.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 021

As I've explained before, some of the pots of Schlumbergera seedlings contain more than one seedling, and consequently bloom in more than one color.¹ 021 is an example of this, though the two plants to have bloomed so far aren't dramatically different.

The first is, you know, fine. Orange. Not the deep dark orange of #025 "Clownfish," not a pastel orange like #024 "Bryce Canyon," it's just orange. After a lot of poking around in the TinEye search, I came up with a picture of a spider crab (Hoplophrys oatesii) on "soft coral," so I'm calling it "Spider Crab."

(As seedlings claim the more obvious photographic subjects from TinEye, the names are likely to get weirder and less obviously related to the flower colors. I would say I'm sorry, but I'm actually looking forward to more of this so I guess I'm not sorry.)

The second seedling in pot #021 is pleasant, though, or at least it photographed pretty well. The only real difference is that its tube is pink. (Technically, "Spider Crab" also has a pink tube, but you have to be looking at it pretty hard to see that it's not quite white.)

TinEye gave me a handful of birthday parties (of one specific child in particular, who seemed to be having a good time), and lots of images of people's food,² so I'm splitting the difference and going with "Birthday Dinner."

Also if anybody has any advice for ways I could mark the plants so as to be able to tell them apart when they're not in bloom, that would be appreciated. At some point I'm going to want to propagate some of these, and I won't be able to do that if I don't know which plant had the flowers I want to propagate. You see the problem.³

Joseph Tychonievich, in his book Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener, suggests embroidery thread -- it's not bulky, it comes in lots of different colors, it won't wash off in water, etc. That seems like a great solution for some kinds of plants (I'd use acrylic yarn because it's what I have already, but same idea.), but I'm hesitant to tie anything onto the segments because of how easily they pull apart. And the only other thing I can think of would be writing on the segments in Sharpie (bad idea: it'd wash or flake off by the time they bloom again), carving into the segments with a needle (permanently disfiguring, and in the event that the plant dropped the wrong segment, I'd lose the information), or sticking something through a segment (same problem).

So I'll go with the yarn thing if I have to, but I'm hoping someone else has an idea that will work even better.

And just for the record: no, dividing the plants is not an option at the moment. Not only are the roots all matted and intertwined with one another, making it nearly impossible to do without killing them (or at least setting them back quite a bit), but I don't have the room for the number of additional pots this would create.

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¹ As will become apparent later, this is sort of a Big Problem for me. If you decide to try to grow some houseplants from seed, and the plant in question is variable enough that you expect to get significantly different seedlings by doing so, pot the seedlings up individually when you start them. Yes, some of them will die, and then you'll feel like you've wasted a bunch of space or potting soil or whatever, but it's better than realizing later that you can't tell them apart unless they're blooming.
² Why has it become a thing for people to take pictures of their food before eating it? I'm not necessarily annoyed by people photographing their food, and I don't think it makes you a bad person if you do or anything. I just don't understand who the photograph is for. I mean, they're not even usually very good photos. Are there people who find it entertaining to reminisce about specific meals they've eaten, but can't do it effectively unless they have a visual prompt? Are there people who are entertained by seeing pictures of meals that other people have eaten in their absence? It's confusing to me.
³ In fact, it looks like several of the plants don't intend to bloom again until next November, which is a long time to have to wait to figure out which is which: I may not have any propagated flowering-sized plants from any of these until the fall of 2017 or 2018. Possibly if I'm lucky, I'll see a few blooms in April or May and be able to start a little sooner, but even so. Would have been helpful if I'd anticipated this problem and tried to do something about it when I still could have, hence the advice in footnote 1.

Pretty picture: Schlumbergera 'Stephanie'

It's Schlumbergera time again!

I'm writing this on 12 January, so I don't yet know how many total posts this second round will contain, but there are at least five. This particular post covers the last named cultivar to bloom, 'Stephanie,' which missed the first named-cultivar post by a couple weeks.

And no, I didn't get a photo of the flowers fully-opened, but I think you can extrapolate from the above pictures what one of those looks like.

This is the first time 'Stephanie' has bloomed for me, and I was a little disappointed with it. Not that the flowers aren't pretty, but it didn't make very many (I think there were five, total.), and I think when I got it, I was 1) expecting more of an orange than a red-orange, and 2) not aware that I would eventually have tens of thousands of orange seedlings. Though all that happened so long ago that I honestly can't remember what I was expecting.

In any case, voila, 'Stephanie.' Tomorrow we start back up with the seedlings again. Hope you like orange!

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Varina's Wine

Next round of Schlumbergera pictures begins Friday. Are you excited? You should be excited.

Paphiopedilum Varina's Wine = Paphiopedilum Varina Vaughn x Paphiopedilum Joanne's Wine (Ref.)

Pretty picture: Lycaste Dainty

Here's another Lycaste (previously: Lycaste Alan Salzman). It has no colors in common with the previous Lycaste, and I'm not really seeing a similarity in shape either, but I suppose I can still believe that the two are related. It'd hardly be the first time that an orchid did something that didn't make sense to me.

It helps that the International Orchid Register has heard of it, and believes it to be a hybrid of Lycaste candida x Lycaste campbellii. (Ref.)

Pretty pictures: Cattleytonia Sister Toby x Cattleya Memoria Robert Strait

Kinda ennh about this one. Points for being . . . vivid, I guess.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium lindleyi

This is Dendrobium aggregatum according to the tag at the show, but D. lindleyi was correct as of last March, according to Plant List.

Previously (D. lindleyi var. majus): 2013

Pretty picture: Vanda Pakchong Blue

We've seen this variety before, pretty consistently from year to year, even (2010, 2011, and maybe 2012), which makes me wonder if it's not just the same plant coming back over and over.

I mean, the only other explanation that would make sense would be that maybe there are just a lot of them out there. But I've only ever seen one per year at the show. So it's probably the same plant over and over.

Vanda Pakchong Blue = Vanda Doctor Anek x Vanda coerulea (Ref.)

Other news: I'll have two more Schlumbergera-bloom posts eventually (021 and 083, and you will definitely want to see 083: it's the best Schlumbergera seedling to date) for sure, and possibly several more (008, 012?, 019, 023, 027, 028, 030, 031, 061, 078, 084, 088) if buds don't drop first.

Anthurium #334 "Jean Poole" is developing nicely but has still not opened yet.

The other three new Anthurium buds (#132 "Eve Stropper," #241 "Megan Gigaterra," and #259 "Tasha Salad") are all still doing okay, but are so far from being ready to open that I'm trying not to get too excited. There's a first-ever bud on #594 ("Charity Case") as well. (Light to medium pink so far: nothing too exciting.)

First-generation berries: Anthurium 'Joli' (medium-sized, lavender to hot pink to orange-red) has in fact been pollinated. Still can't tell about 'Florida.' (huge, orange) Should have seeds to sow from 'Midori' (large, green) just any day now, as well as six spadices' worth of seeds from 'Pandola.' (large, pink)

Second-generation berries: nothing much on the horizon at the moment save for #203 "Anna Mae Hemensouz" (medium, dark red) and #231 "Rhea Listick" (medium, purple-pink). #234 "Ross Koz" (medium, purple-pink) has some berries forming but it seems like I've been waiting on them forever; ditto for #245 "Sawyer Ad" (medium-large, red) and #276 "Zach Religious" (medium-large, pink/red). I'm getting ready to move another set of seedlings into 3-inch pots soon, to make more room to start seeds, so expect the plant census to make another big jump. I could well wind up with 2000 by the end of 2015, if this sort of thing keeps up.