Anthurium no. 0619 "Seamus Spiral"

Nothing terribly distinctive about Seamus. The color is pretty ordinary,

and the spathes appear to be delicious.

The leaves are a little bit interesting, in that while some of them seem to be pretty appealing to thrips too,

quite a few don't show any damage at all.

There's also something mildly interesting about the new leaves, which are this bright apple green color that I find appealing.

Not that that's an especially unusual color for new Anthurium leaves, but it's not typical (the most common color for new leaves is basically the same color as the old leaves. Maybe a shade lighter than the old leaves.), and it's kind of nice.

So I dunno. The overall plant isn't terrible looking,

but I'm having a hard time coming up with reasons to keep Seamus around. Most likely outcome: he'll hang around until I decide I need more space. There's really no incentive to keep a plant around that produces small, red/yellow, thrips-eaten blooms.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum fairrienanum x Paphiopedilum Icy Galaxy

I looked, but I couldn't find a picture for Paph. Icy Galaxy. I found pictures of its descendants, which are mostly light-colored, like this one, but the grex itself is mysteriously absent.

The other 50% of the cross is Paphiopedilum fairrieanum. Plenty of previously-blogged plants have Paph. fairrieanum in their ancestry, but there's no clear family resemblance. Fairrieanum doesn't appear to be bringing color or patterning to the genetic table, though there are plenty of other possibilities: size, shape, disease or insect resistance, etc.

Paphiopedilum Jade Dragon (?) (2012)

Paphiopedilum Faire-Maud (2012)

Paphiopedilum Golden Crest (2012)

and Paphiopedilum Winwine x fairrieanum (2016)

Anthurium no. 0855 "The Very Miss Dusty O"

That's not a typo; I am constantly having to stop myself from correcting the name to the more logical-sounding "very dusty Miss O." Just to get that out of the way.

This is another posthumous seedling post; she bloomed early, while still in a 3-inch pot, and is still the only plant to fully complete a bloom while still in a 3-inch pot.¹ However, she also had scale, so I took the pictures and then threw her out. Not a big loss anyway: even if she'd been bug-free, she was just another unremarkable pink bloom.

Foliage was okay, I guess.

There was at least quite a bit of it.

But as much as I appreciated the enthusiasm, it wasn't worth it to keep a scale reservoir around for a plant with a boring inflorescence. So that's the end of The Very Miss Dusty O's story, until the name gets reused.

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¹ 1038 Adlai Lowe was the first seedling to bloom in a 3-inch pot, in February 2016, though his inflorescence couldn't open completely because of its location. He hasn't tried again yet.
1232 Fiona St. James tried, in March 2016, but was thrown out on account of scale before it opened. Or maybe the bud aborted, and then I threw her out because of the scale. I can't remember. There was definitely scale.
0855 The Very Miss Dusty O was the first 3-inch plant to fully complete a bloom, in May 2016.
0523 Gilda Lilly tried in June, and then got scale.
0765 Hope Leeze's first bud appeared in August 2016 and is still in progress as I write this. The bud is pinkish-red, and I imagine that will be the final color as well. Which is boring, but "boring" is still better than "thrown away because of scale."
1095 Carolina Pineforest also started a first bud in August 2016, which is still in progress. Her bud is white so far, which almost always means that the finished spathe will be pink.

Anthurium no. 0805 "Triana Hill"

Finally we get to talk about 0805 Triana Hill. I've been excited about this.

Triana's color isn't unprecedented: 0097 Colin Ambulance, 0328 Polly Esther Blend, and 0596 Alisa Summers have all been pretty similar. But Colin has trouble with thrips, and his blooms are short-lived. Polly flips her spathes back, which is annoying, and her blooms are relatively small, too. Alisa's good -- one of the best seedlings I have, of any color -- but she's still only one plant, and things happen.

I don't know whether Triana will turn out to be quite as excellent as Alisa, but we're off to a good start. Her foliage is generally pretty nice,

and, like Alisa, she suckers well.

I would like it if Triana and Alisa both held onto their peachy, light orange hue a little bit better: in both cases they open up peach but quickly turn light pink. The peach is more interesting.

The most recent bloom, a few days after opening.

I think this is the first bloom, a few weeks after opening. The difference isn't huge, but since the color is subtle to begin with, it doesn't take a lot to turn it boring.
Happy with her regardless, and it's also notable that Triana is the first pretty second-generation seedling.¹ She's the daughter of 0234 Ross Koz, but you wouldn't know it to look at them:

Left: 0234 Ross Koz (F1). Right: 0805 Triana Hill (F2).
Because it took me so long to get around to writing about Triana, several other second-generation seedlings have bloomed by now.² Whether pink or orange, Triana remains the prettiest of her generation so far, though plenty of the others are still at least interesting. And new buds keep appearing all the time.

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¹ The very first second-generation bloom was 0716 Herbie Hind, son of 0239 Russ Teanale. I didn't like Herbie's first or second blooms, which were scarred by thrips, but one could argue that he was pretty by bloom number three:

The other previous second-generation bloom was on 1038 Adlai Lowe, Triana's half-brother (Adlai's seed parent was also 0234 Ross Koz). It technically might not count as a completed bloom, since it couldn't actually open all the way.

²• From 0005 Chad Michaels: 0694 Brad Romance, 0698 Landon Cider, 0721 Chandelier Divine Brown, 0723 Tara Dactyl, 0842 Pretty Punasti
• From 0108 Deena Sequins: 0760 Delta Work
• From 0234 Ross Koz: 0807 Lucida Italic, 0855 The Very Miss Dusty O
• From 0239 Russ Teanale: 0690 Sister Kitty Catalyst, 0718 Donovan

Unfinished business: Clivia seedlings

The picture is six months out of date, and I've up-potted these since it was taken. The basic information -- that the self-pollinated Clivia 'Aztec Gold' seedlings are still alive -- remains true, though.

The seeds were sown in August 2013, and there was an update on them in April 2014.

My other Clivias -- the parent 'Aztec Gold' and a plain-orange offset from WCW in October 2007 -- are still around. The latter is fighting a scale infestation at the moment, which is upsetting,¹ but 'Aztec Gold' has continued to offset well since it started in January 2014, and the offsets are now large enough to consider potting up separately. Though I'm probably not going to, because it turns out that I like the fuller look one gets with multiple plants in the same pot.

The seedlings will probably not bloom light yellow like their parent did; I assume it's a hybrid. Not really concerned with it either way: I've had Clivias since 2007, and have only seen one bloom in that time. I mean, I'd eventually like to know what the blooms look like, but I'm not necessarily expecting to find out.


P. S.: In the course of trying to locate patent information for Clivia 'Aztec Gold,' I ran across a blog that consisted solely of two blog posts of mine, which had been copied almost completely -- photos, title, captions, and text -- though for some reason not the tags. The internet is infuriating, and full of terrible people.

I've submitted a takedown request to Google,² and I imagine it will be granted, but so much stuff of mine has been duplicated in one place or another (as I discover when I search for information about one of my plants) that it would take me a lifetime just to fill out the requests for getting it all taken down. This is not a good system for preventing content theft, and I am angry.

I'll let you know what happens. (It has probably already happened, by the time you read this: I'm writing on 20 August.)

UPDATE (22 Aug.): Google had taken the posts down by August 22nd. The blog still exists, which is mildly irritating to me, but at least it no longer has any posts.

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¹ This is the first time I've had a pest problem with Clivia, I think. I knew they could get scale and mealybugs, but since it hadn't happened before, I sort of thought that maybe my personal pet scale wasn't compatible with Clivias. So it's been disappointing to learn otherwise.
I removed a couple leaves and dosed it with imidacloprid. Ordinarily, throwing it out would have made more sense, but it's not like Clivias are widely available around here, and besides, this particular one has some sentimental value. So we'll see how far the imidacloprid gets me.
² Which is one reason why I'm not linking to the posts in question -- the links would soon be dead, assuming Google does the right thing and deletes the blog. And I have every reason to think they will. The other reason is that if Google doesn't delete the blog, then I'm loath to give the thief any credibility with search engines by linking to them.

Pretty picture: Phalaenopsis NOID

This didn't photograph well; the flower spike was tall enough that it was higher than the display's background, so I caught a lot of greenhouse roof in the photos and it got kind of washed out. Which is too bad, because I was very impressed with it. Not only is the color neat, but I don't think I've seen this kind of patterning before.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what its name is, so that's all I can tell you about it.

In unrelated news, letting the dill go to seed in 2015 did finally get me some swallowtail caterpillars. I've been trying for at least a few years, and this is the first year I've spotted any.

I think, based on what I've seen flying around this year and what I've seen on-line, that this is probably a black swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes). The caterpillars were only visible briefly; I don't know if birds got them or if they're pupas already. Happy to see them either way; it was maaaaaaaaaybe even worth all the dill seedlings I'm going to have to pull up next year.

Anthurium no. 0404 "Joe Hai"

As our regularly-scheduled reminder that 50% of seedlings will be below average, we have Joe.

Hardly the worst seedling of all time, and Joe even has a couple positive characteristics. His color isn't the worst; he produces more flowers than average; he offsets well.

On the other hand, the blooms are also short (I had trouble photographing it because the leaves kept getting in the way), and the burnt spathe bothers me.¹ The foliage is also more marked-up than I would like, though I've seen worse.

Verdict: Joe's probably on the way out, unless he manages to produce a healthier-looking bloom pretty soon.

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¹ I don't know what causes this; I would normally assume thrips, but thrips damage is usually both shallow (not going all the way through the spathe) and less broad (small patches separated from one another, as opposed to a large continuous dead zone along the spathe margin).
I can't rule out the thrips, but it doesn't look like them. Best guess: perhaps I'm letting the plants get too dry while the bud is developing or opening?

Anthurium no. 0345 "Lauren Forcement"

As I've mentioned before, I'm writing the seedling posts in the order that the new blooms appear.¹ So it's a coincidence that I'm writing about a Lauren immediately after writing about a different Lauren. Laurens were just having a moment in mid-May.

This particular Lauren is just okay. The bloom is bigger than most of the recent first blooms have been,

but it's a common color combination. Similarly, the foliage is fine: minimal scarring,

and there's a lot of it,

but it's not doing anything particularly new, either. Since this set of photos was taken, Lauren's revealed a tendency toward long internodal distances² (which means the plant flops over a lot) and reflexed spathes.³ She doesn't have any specific qualities that make her terrible, but she also doesn't have anything uniquely awesome going on. So: a keeper, but probably only until I get desperate for space, at which point she'll be sold or discarded.

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¹ Among other things, this means that all the posts I'm working on now are about blooms that appeared three months ago. Which feels weird, but allows more time for the plants' qualities to reveal themselves.
² I.e. relatively long segments of stem between leaves. The plant is still perfectly healthy, but compact plants are more valuable: they're easier to photograph, and remain in sellable condition longer.
³ I.e. the spathe flips back away from the spadix a few days after it first opens. This is also mostly a problem for photography and commercial production.