Anthurium news

Time to take a break from the Schlumbergera seedlings, and see what the Anthurium seedlings have been up to lately. (If this disappoints you, don't worry: plenty¹ more Schlumbergera posts to come.)

It's been five or six weeks since the last Anthurium update, so there are a lot of individual stories to tell. For my convenience, I'm just going to take them in (mostly) numerical order, though I have news about three named varieties also.

'Florida'
I really thought this was going to be the moment when 'Florida' was successfully pollinated. I used brand-new blooms, I applied pollen at varying times of day, when the spadices should have been receptive, and I did it several times. Ffffffftt. Nothing. It's really looking like 'Florida' is not genetically compatible with the rest of the Anthuriums here. If this is the case, my best guess for an explanation is that it might be a triploid or something (which would also explain why the blooms and leaves are so huge).


'Joli'
'Joli,' on the other hand, has definitely been successfully pollinated --

-- and appears to be developing normally so far. Which is pretty exciting, since at their best, the blooms look like this:

'Midori'
I have collected and sown nine seeds² from 'Midori' so far. It's not clear whether they're going to germinate, but at least they haven't grown fungus. It's always a good sign when they don't grow fungus.

This seed was sown on 18 January and photographed on 26 January.
Also the most recent bloom has changed color a little bit, in a more dramatic fashion than the previous one did, though the photo still doesn't do a great job of showing the red veining:

NOID purple
The NOID purple plant hasn't been doing well for a long time, but I've never been clear on what its problem was, exactly. I suspect overpotting. In any case, things reached a point where I felt I needed to cut off the tops and start them over, so I'm trying to root them in water now. I've left the stumps in their pot, and we'll see whether they resprout, but even if they do, I'm not optimistic about the plant's long-term future. There are enough children and grandchildren of the NOID purple around that the genes are probably not entirely lost, even if all the cuttings fail, but obviously I'm a little worried about it.


#040 "Ivy Winters"
Ivy produced another bloom shortly after finishing her first. She's been drying out too much between waterings, so I may need to move her up to a 6-inch (15 cm) pot soon if I want to keep her around. The flowers may not be special enough to be worth the trouble, though.

#046 "Aurora Boreanaz"
Aurora was I think the third seedling to bloom after getting moved to a 6-inch pot last October. She's doing a lot better lately than she had been: the spathe on the new bloom is (relatively) uncracked, the new foliage looks better, and up until an early draft of this post where I said I hadn't seen any thrips, I hadn't seen any thrips. (*sigh*)

#085 "Carson Trucks"
Carson's finally got a new bud going, after being moved up to a 6-inch pot last November. This may or may not be worth getting excited about (the bloom color is nice, but the blooms are small and infrequent), but it's been such a long time that I can't help getting a little excited about it.

#118 "Elijah Sturdabowtit"
Elijah says hello. He's still doing that thing of being orange when the spathe first opens, and then turning pink within a couple of days. I go back and forth about whether or not this might be a good thing.

#120 "Eliza Boutisecksis"
Eliza is this close to unfurling a new spathe. She was also moved up to a 6-inch pot last November. I'm hoping that being in a bigger pot will help reduce the drought stress damage to the buds, and I'll wind up with something bigger and shinier than the previous blooms have been, but we'll see.

#132 "Eve Stropper"
Eve's bud aborted, probably due to drought stress. We will see, though, that this doesn't mean that we need to give up on her forever.


#231 "Rhea Listick"
Rhea waited until I'd sown the seeds from her last bloom before producing a new bud. The new bud looks like it might be bigger and prettier than the previous ones, however. She got repotted in November, up to a 6-inch pot, which I'm hoping will encourage blooming: she's one of the more promising seedlings so far.

#237 "Roxy Casbah"
Roxy tried to bloom last May but then aborted after I started spraying the plants with white oil. I wasn't sure whether she'd bother to try again, but she has. So it's nice to know that that situation isn't permanent.³

#241 "Megan Gigaterra"
Megan's been working on a light pink bud for what feels like forever. I'm not expecting it to be terribly exciting once it happens, but at this point any new first-time blooms are neat, and it's a pretty large bud, at least. If she looks like I expect her to look, Megan may be one of the seedlings I sell off this spring or summer.

#248 "Sue Casa"
Sue started a bud last summer, but aborted it, and then she died in mid-January, probably due to overwatering. Or maybe just due to sucking. Sometimes seedlings just suck.


#257 "Summer Bederth-Enuthers"
New first-time bloomer. This bud is only a couple weeks old, so it may not amount to anything, but I suppose it's meaningful that Summer's making the attempt.

#259 "Tasha Salad"
Tasha's one of the most exciting seedlings to me at the moment; not only a first-time bloomer, but a first-time bloomer that developed quickly and had a purplish bloom. It's pretty close to the color of #035 "Alyssa Edwards," though with a smaller spathe. Unlike Alyssa, Tasha started a new bud before her first was fully open, which is also a good sign, and she's on the fast track to get a 6-inch pot.

#264 "Trey Lerpark"
Trey's first bud was discovered last Monday. On Monday, there was a distinct purplish cast to the bud; by the time I took this photo on Tuesday morning, there no longer was. It's conceivable that he might change back to purple before the spathe opens -- he may be a full sibling of Tasha's, and buds do often change color as they develop -- but he might stay a plain red. No way to know now: we'll just have to wait and see.

#279 "Tristan Shout"
Another plant that aborted a bud last summer and started over this winter. Fingers crossed.

#290 "RuPaul Charles" & #334 "Jean Poole"
Ru has nice foliage, and the bud is an interesting dark red. This should be exciting, but I'm a little wary, because of how things turned out with Jean.

#290 "RuPaul Charles"
Jean has a lot going for her: dark red buds, dark, glossy foliage with an interesting color and shape, able to hold herself upright, just kind of an overall handsome plant. The problem is that the bloom was disappointing:

Not the color promised by the buds, plus the spathe was small compared to the overall size of the plant. Admittedly, the red spathe / lavender spadix combination is interesting,⁴ the flower has lasted a long time so far, and Jean began working on a second bud almost immediately, so maybe I'll be more impressed next time.

#334 "Jean Poole," second bud
Even with disappointing blooms, Jean has a lot going for her, and I intend to keep her around. But I had hoped for something a bit more spectacular. Which is why I'm not as excited about #290 "RuPaul Charles" as I would otherwise be; I'm trying to keep my expectations low.

Oh, and: the appearance of #290 "RuPaul Charles" right before the premiere of Season 7 of RuPaul's Drag Race⁵ is coincidental but pleasant. Sometimes the seedlings just know these things.


#330 "Faye Quinette"
Faye's foliage is pretty similar to RuPaul and Jean: all three have dark green leaves with a matte finish (a trait that seems to come from the NOID red, even though the NOID red's leaves are fairly shiny), so I was expecting the bud to match as well, but Faye's bud is actually more brown than anything thus far, and it's not even a pretty brown. I do like it when unexpected new things happen, and a brown spathe wouldn't be the worst thing, but . . . well, I'm not sure what to hope for, I guess.⁶

#344 "Formica Dinette"
Formica's bud is really too small to tell what color it's going to be, at this point, but I'm guessing it will probably be pink. Probably nothing interesting will happen here, but it's news, so.

#346 "Lois Carmen DiNominatre"
Only just discovered Lois's first bud three weeks ago, and it didn't last: it had aborted within two weeks. The location of the bud was a clue that this would happen: keep reading.

#415 "Darby Dragons"
I had just moved Darby from a 3-inch pot to a 4-inch pot six weeks before I noticed this:

It aborted the bud after a few weeks, which didn't surprise me: it was only 14 months old at that point. 14 months for a bud isn't unheard of (#058 "Betty Larsony" built a first bud at 12 months), but the record for a bud which goes on to become an actual bloom is 15 months (#282 "Dave Trading"). (The average so far is 25 months.) Darby also chose a weird location to start building a bud -- ordinarily they start with a node near the growing tip, not an old node from the side of the plant. Lois did this too, then aborted; #076 "Bob Humbug" aborted side blooms several times before growing one from near the growing tip that survived. Not sure what any of this means, but it's a pattern, and will no doubt be helpful for calibrating my enthusiasm level in the future.


#555 "Mystique Summers Madison"
Mystique's bud is another one that has only been around for three weeks, which ordinarily would make me hesitant to get too excited about it, but it's also unusually big for a first-time bud, and growing pretty rapidly. Additionally, Mystique is older than you'd think from her ID number -- a lot of the seedlings from the middle and late 500s are divisions from older plants. She's either a clone or a sibling of #083 "Carmen Adairya," and is 38 months old even if she doesn't look a day over 29. So there's good reason to think she may be perfectly capable of knocking out a decent bloom already.

#565 "MysterE"
MysterE was divided from, and consequently either a clone or sibling of, #232 "Rhoda Badcek." (Who is also producing a bud right now, by the way.)

#592 "Tess LeCoil"
Tess isn't budding or blooming, but I wanted you to see this:

I don't know what this is. I suspect I should probably get rid of it. I've seen this sort of thing a few other times on very young seedlings just after transplanting: they never actually grow out of it and eventually I wind up throwing them away. This is the first time I've seen an otherwise normal-looking plant spontaneously grow something like this. No idea what it means, and it's not in any way attractive, but it's at least different, right?


#594 "Charity Case"
Like #555 "Mystique Summers Madison" and #565 "MysterE," Charity is older than her ID number would suggest, and is either a clone or sibling of #279 "Tristan Shout." Charity and Tristan are also blooming at basically the same time, like MysterE and Rhoda, though Charity beat Tristan to opening by enough time that I couldn't get a photo of his bloom for this post. In this case, the synchronization makes a bit more sense: not only are they possibly genetically identical, but they also both live on the same flat, which means that they get water at the same time, and have the same light duration (if not intensity), temperature, and humidity.

And that's all we have for today. The buds are coming along much faster now (seven showed up as I was in the process of working on this post, and two buds opened, necessitating additional rounds of photos), so you probably won't have to wait nearly as long for the next Anthurium update as you did for this one. I'm also working (intermittently) on a post about Anthurium foliage (it's more interesting than you think! I swear!), which in theory could happen at any moment, but will probably actually happen in a few more weeks. Maybe months.

Tomorrow: back to the Schlumbergera mines.

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¹ ("plenty" = at least five six. At least two of those are attractive, and at least one will be non-orange.)
² (probably 'Midori' x NOID red)
³ Almost always, a plant that aborts a bud will try again fairly soon thereafter. Only a handful of the seedlings have started blooms, aborted, and then declined to try again within six months: so far, it's just #058 "Betty Larsony" (who has a good excuse, since she got cut back and hasn't recovered from that yet), #088 "Charlotte F. Babylon" (first and only bud started in March 2014), #281 "Laganja Estranja" (April 2014), #124 "Fox Saik" (May 2014) and #265 "Madame LaQueer" (June 2014).
#236 "Roxanne DeBree" technically qualifies also, but I'm seeing hints of a developing bud there. It's not unambiguous enough for me to make it official yet, but Roxanne could in fact be trying again.
⁴ (if reminiscent of #144 "Graham Reaper," who did the same color combination but wore it a little bit better)
⁵ After? I haven't been able to find an actual date for it yet. I'd read that it was going to premiere January 26, wrote a note for myself about it and everything, but then I searched on the 27th and apparently it hadn't; all anybody would say for a date was "spring." So I don't know. But previously it's always been January or February (we do not speak of All-Stars), so I'm assuming it still will be.
⁶ My actual expectation here is that the green will diminish over time, and the red or whatever it is will intensify, and I'll wind up with another red or dark red. But it might be fun to be proven wrong? Even if it means I have a baby-shit brown Anthurium? Possibly?

Schlumbergera seedling no. 012

Number 012 bloomed a long time ago, and looked very similar to this, so I'm assuming this is the same individual seedling that bloomed before. It's pretty similar to "Neon Like" (#028B), but in a good way.

Lots of the usual garbage at TinEye, of course, but the nice thing about TinEye is that if you have the patience to keep flipping through the photos, sooner or later you'll come across something new.¹

In this case, the new and amusing thing was this photo of a child's² blanket/sofa fort.

Apparently there is a purple light saber serving as a central support, which not only makes it look kind of awesome but gets the colors to match the bloom pretty well too.

So I'm calling #012 "Sofa Fort," because why the hell not. Also it turns out to be sort of fun to say.

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¹ By that point, the colors may or may not still match what you fed in. It's not clear to me how the search-by-color feature works, but there's clearly some wiggle room in what it considers a "match."
² (I'm assuming. The child in question looks a little young to have been the architect, but is clearly the person the fort was created for. So like the site manager or something.)

Schlumbergera seedling no. 061

Not sure how I feel about the actual plant, but it was nice having a different color range to feed into TinEye. I got a number of unexpected things: chocolate pudding, some sort of oncology-related illustration, a dirt road in Oklahoma,¹ some kind of event having to do with the North Carolina National Guard, and on and on like that.

But then I ran into this untitled photo, and it became clear that somewhere in this photo was the name I was looking for. The Flickr page doesn't give a lot of context, just that it's got something to do with Raw Artists Media, and Boise, Idaho, neither of which sound like great names to me, so I'm just going to describe what I see and that will be the name.

So: "Leather Fairy." I'm not 100% happy with this (it seems like it needs something more specific, or an additional word, or something), but it's the best I can do under the circumstances.

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¹ "Oklahoma Dirt Road" is certainly a name I'll be keeping in mind for future blooms. They have some strikingly colored dirt in Oklahoma (e.g.); I figure there has to be some overlap with Schlumbergera petals.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 023

In the event that #025 "Clownfish" is unable to fulfill its duties as the Best Orange Seedling, I think #023 should be able to fill in just fine. In fact, #023 may be superior -- it's certainly got a lot more blooms on it at once than "Clownfish" has ever had.

I'd been expecting TinEye to shrug its shoulders and throw up the same collection of leaves / pumpkins / tomatoes / etc. it gives me every time, but I actually got a substantially different group. Which was nice. Lots of graffiti (apparently people really, really want to write on the color orange with a black marker -- there were bridges, bathroom stalls, t-shirts, a record or record mock-up, something unidentifiable that might have been orange wallpaper), a few citrus-themed photos (blood oranges, "Ruby Red" grapefruit), surprising numbers of license plates and tennis players on red clay courts, miscellaneous building materials (wood, terracotta tiles, brick), and one place to buy building materials (Home Depot).

I was sort of tempted to go with "Tennis Court," as a reference both to the color of clay courts and the Lorde song¹ (which I remain fond of), but an image search for "tennis court" suggests that although not unheard of, orange is an uncommon color for tennis courts, so it'd be confusing.²

So the upshot is that I was unable to build a name out of the TinEye results, even given a substantially new selection of TinEye results, and it seems like that's going to happen a lot more often unless some seedlings start blooming in non-orange colors. Which they do not currently seem motivated to do.³ So for this one, I'm making the executive decision to call Schlumbergera #023 "Stoked." Because I am a California surfer dude from 1991, apparently.

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^{1 2} More confusing: lots of blue courts. When did tennis courts start being blue? And why? What was wrong with green? So many tennis-court-related questions.
³ There's one with a magenta bud right now, #078, but it wouldn't be the first time a magenta bud made a last-minute swerve to orange. Buds'll lie to you.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 028

TinEye, after much searching through the usual orange things, came up with a photo of Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen¹ on stage. After a bit of blinking and Googling, I wished on a star to be in that kind of shape when I'm 57,² then declared the seedling officially named.

Behold Schlumbergera #028 "Phil Collen."

A second seedling in pot #028 came up with something a little lighter in color, a week or two later:

For #028B, TinEye didn't give me much to work with. One picture of the bottom of someone's foot, so I considered "Sole" for a second or two, but then I saw this photo taken at the Museum of Neon Art. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a museum of neon art, but apparently there is. And that led to thinking about the Bjork song "All Neon Like," so I'm going with "Neon Like" for #028B.

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¹ (=/= Phil Collins)
² (I wasn't in that kind of shape when I was 20, for fuck's sake.)

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Love Memory 'Fizz'

Some websites say "Dendrobium nobile Love Memory 'Fizz.'" I don't know what this signifies, exactly, and consequently have no idea whether it's accurate or relevant, but I include it for the sake of completeness.

Should perhaps also note that I find this one a lot more appealing than I do most Dendrobiums. Which also may not be accurate or relevant, but what the hell.

Dendrobium Love Memory 'Fizz' = Dendrobium White Rabbit x Dendrobium Sachi (Ref.)

And now some unfinished Schlumbergera business:

I attempted to narrow down the field of possible names for S. #083A --

-- and instead wound up enlarging it. Part of what happened was that on Monday, there was news about Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX) announcing that he was naming two "autonomous spaceport drone ships" after ships from Iain M. Banks' series of Culture novels, and their names would be Just Read the Instructions and Of Course I Still Love You.

Which sent me down a wikihole of reading all the names of all the ships in all the novels,¹ some of which were very amusing (and possibly even more amusing in context: I wouldn't know),² and that led somehow to the discovery of a Twitter account that periodically proposes new possible ship names along the same lines as the originals.

So, we have an abbreviated version of the list I came up with originally (about half of the originals have been dumped or altered), plus some of the names proposed in the comments of the #083 introduction post, plus a handful of names that occurred to me spontaneously just going about my regular business, plus a substantial chunk of names that are Iain M. Banks Culture ships, other people's ideas for Culture ships, or my own ideas for Culture ships.³ In alphabetical order:

"AbFab Darling:" Enough of an improvement on "Sweetie Darling" that I'm going to forget about "Sweetie" in favor of "AbFab." Successfully evokes intense colors thrown together haphazardly. Suggested by Diana.
"Casino:" Under consideration. You have to admit, the flower's color scheme does overlap that of most (all?) casinos. (Do an image search, I dare you.) Probably a little too generic, ultimately: a particular casino would be more interesting. But I'm sure all the particular casinos would sue me.
"Delirium:" From Paul's suggestion of "Delirious." Also possibly too generic, but nevertheless being considered. Possibly gets me minor nerd cred points for the (very) glancing Neil Gaiman reference.
"Gaga:" Paul's suggestion. I'm a little worried that it might age badly, depending on what Lady Gaga does with herself in the future. I'm, like, thinking about thinking about this one. It does have going for it that it'd be the easiest candidate to type.
"Psychedelic Bunny:" From Nadya W-G's suggestion. There's certainly something psychedelic going on here. The bunny part is questionable.⁴
"She's So Unusual:" Prompted by Paul's riff ("So Unusual") on Claude's suggestion ("Cyndi Lauper"). Makes sense with the plant, and I have nothing against Cyndi Lauper⁵ or the album in question. It could work.
"Tamika Flynn:" Seemed to be the crowd favorite from the original post,⁶ growing on me, and the previous arguments in favor still apply.
"Uh Hey Baby:" I'm cooling off on "Uh Hey Baby," as other, more evocative and colorful options have been suggested, but I'm not yet prepared to rule it out.
"You're Not Going Out Dressed Like That:" Also Culture-ship-esque. Unwieldy, and I cringe imagining all the extra typing I'd have to do, but somehow . . . appropriate?

Honorable mentions, but not serious consideration, to:

"Gravitas Rainbow:" Both a pun⁷ and a gravitas joke. Stolen from the Twitter account. The "rainbow" almost makes it work, but I don't like it well enough to make it permanent.
"It's More of an Aesthetic Question:" Culture-ship-type option. Stolen from the Twitter account. Probably too long to be serious, plus if it's going to be a super-long name, "You're Not Going Out Dressed Like That" is better.
"Naked Celebrity Gravitas:" Stolen from the Twitter account. Not serious, I think, but just imagine the search engine traffic I'd get!
"Ruth Bader Ginsberg:" Not much of a contender, on the grounds that I can't imagine her wearing colors like this, even though I'm sure she probably has at some point or another, and maybe even is right this moment. I'm not sure I've ever seen the Notorious RBG in regular clothes clothes. But there really needs to be something named for Our Most Adorable Supreme Court Justice of All Time.⁸ Maybe an Episcia.
"Tripping Balls:" Well in line with the psychedelia angle, but probably too vulgar for actual consideration.

Anyway. So it looks like we have nine serious(-ish) candidates. Advocate for or against them in the comments;⁹ I plan to decide and announce a name by 2 February. Though I may have to pull a name out of a hat or something: however hard I try, I can't seem to eliminate any more than five options.

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¹ I have not actually ever read any of Iain M. Banks' science fiction novels, though I've read two of his mainstream books, a long time ago (Whit and The Crow Road). I understand that the Culture series are considered to be good by the people who consider that sort of thing.
² e.g. So Much For Subtlety; You Would If You Really Loved Me; I Blame My Mother; I Blame Your Mother, etc. There's also a running joke regarding the word "gravitas," which includes Zero Gravitas, Very Little Gravitas Indeed, and Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall, which will explain some of the name options you'll see momentarily.
³ If you proposed something that didn't wind up on the list, the most likely reasons I didn't include it are that it implies colors that the flower doesn't contain ("Aurora Borealis" or "Mardi Gras" really should be at least partly green), I included a riff on your suggestion but not the actual suggestion, you made the suggestion after I completed writing this post and I didn't want to spend my whole Monday re-editing it, or you suggested a group of related names and I picked one out of that group instead of all of them.
⁴ I have a hard time seeing Schlumbergera blooms as anything other than hummingbirds, personally. But "Psychedelic Hummingbird" seems redundant, so we'll let "Bunny" stand.
⁵ (as if anyone could)
⁶ (among those expressing an opinion)
⁷ (on the TV show Gravity's Rainbow)
⁸ (not counting Clarence Thomas)
⁹ Or say something about the Dendrobium at the top of the page. You remember the Dendrobium, right?

Schlumbergera seedling no. 008 (again)

I suppose I'm designating this as #008B, since we've already seen a #008. #008A was disappointing, due to excessively reflexed petals, but #008B is fine. Orange, as most of the seedlings have been,¹ but there's nothing wrong with orange.

I think this one sort of broke TinEye's search-by-color page, because in addition to the usual, familiar photos of tomatoes, pumpkins, autumn leaves, etc.,² I got a number of images like this, mocking former President George W. Bush by pretending that his brain farts are revealing of things that he actually thinks,³ next to the word "candor" and its definition. Leaving aside the question of whether or not it is appropriate and desirable to mock President Bush, because I know we all have opinions on that (and likely don't care what one another's opinions are, making their discussion pointless⁴), I'm bothered by this because the background on the images doesn't even seem like that great of a color match to the bloom.

However, given the repetition of the definition for "candor," which is a short and fairly pleasant word, I think I'm going to roll with that, rather than scroll through page after page of assorted orange things looking for a better name. Schlumbergera #008B "Candor" it is. Apologies to those in the audience who would spell it "Candour," those who would like to discuss the Bush Presidency, and those who feel wronged in some way they can't put their fingers on but would like an apology anyway.

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¹ All the flowers you've seen so far are from seedlings that had 'Caribbean Dancer' as their seed parent. There are a few seedlings from the 2012 batch that have the NOID peach as seed parent, but none of them have done anything, and frankly they all tend to look a little odd so I'm not sure I even want them to bloom. I think so many of the seedlings are blooming orange because they're all the result of the same 'Caribbean Dancer' x NOID peach cross, and in Schlumbergera math, 'Caribbean Dancer' x NOID peach = orange.
The batch I started in 2014, which may begin blooming in 2016, should have more variety: the seed parents were 'Caribbean Dancer,' the NOID peach, the NOID white, and the NOID magenta. I don't have any guesses on the pollen parents, but it should be at least those four, giving us at least six different possible combinations. As opposed to just the one.
Assuming I start a set in 2015 or 2016, those will have more variety yet: I have fruits developing on 'Exotic Dancer,' 'Stephanie,' #057 "Pyrotechnic," and #025 "Clownfish," in addition to the four plants from the 2014 set. I may also have managed to get some pollen from the NOID yellow spread around, though that's uncertain: I haven't been able to get the NOID yellow to accept any pollen, so it may be sterile.
The point being that you won't be seeing orange forever and ever. Just for the next year or so.
² One thing I've learned from TinEye: people are not taking enough photographs of carrots. Tomatoes outnumber carrots by at least five to one, and tomatoes aren't even orange. So get out there and take some pictures of carrots today. They need your support.
³ Possibly they are. Possibly they aren't. We don't need to start dredging up the things he may not have meant to say: he's a public figure, and has said and did plenty of things on purpose, out in the open, that we can look at, if we're interested in what sort of man he is. Whatever your political leanings, there's more than enough of information there to judge his character if judging his character is what you want to do.
⁴ So don't even start in the comments. I mean it. A lot of us hang out on plant blogs partly to get away from people arguing about politics.

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.