Anthuriums no. 0171, 0205, 0236, 0560

Well, it's been a busy week, folks. Between beginning to send Schlumbergera seedling cuttings out, trying to keep the weeds out of the garden beds (pending the annual planting of the Cannas), and finding out the husband and I are being sued (by both God and Jesus, even!),¹ it's just one thing after another around here. I've also been scurrying frantically trying to keep up with which of the Anthuriums have new buds, which ones dropped buds, which ones haven't dropped buds yet but look like they're going to, which ones have actually opened blooms, which ones that have opened blooms have been blogged previously, and so forth, I'm a bit lost.²

Almost all of the first-time Anthurium blooms lately have been red / yellow or red / white;³ none of the blooms are especially interesting, though they at least vary a little in shape.

Seedling no. 0171 "Genevieve la Difference"
Genevieve was one of the seedlings that dropped buds last summer after the white oil treatment. The bloom wasn't worth the wait, alas: it's the smallest of the group, plus it's mildly damaged by thrips or drought or something.

Seedling no. 0205 "Venus D-Lite"
Venus, on the other hand, has some potential. She's small too, but not as small as Genevieve, and the shape is a lot better. The spadix is weird (disproportionately small, plus I don't know what's going on at the tip there), but at least there's no obvious thrips damage, which is the main thing I care about lately.

Seedling no. 0236 "Roxanne DeBree"
Roxanne is probably the best of the group. Only slightly smaller than Venus, and the shape is more or less "normal." No marks from thrips, either.

Seedling no. 0560 "Jill O'Schottz"
Jill's okay. A little damage toward the bottom of the spathe on the right side, there, and she's a little smaller than Venus and Roxanne, but whatever. She's fine.

None of the leaves are remarkable, for good or bad. Going in the same order as above:

(Genevieve)

(Venus)

(Roxanne)

(Jill)
None of the leaves seem to be especially bothered by thrips, either. Jill has a problem with burnt leaf tips, as we will see, which is an unusual problem for my Anthuriums to have, and I'm not sure how to explain it.

The photos of the entire plants⁴ illustrate one other problem some of the seedlings have, which is that of internodal distance (= the distance between leaves, on the main stem). Genevieve has a short internodal distance, and so all her leaves appear to come from more or less the same point, giving a nice, compact-looking plant that stands more or less upright and doesn't get all tangled up in neighboring plants. I mean, Genevieve has other problems, but she does this part well.

The remaining three plants, though, are faster-growing and have a longer internodal distance, which means that over time, they start to look a little viney. That's fine in some contexts, but it doesn't look good on these: they're always flopping over and tangling and the stem gets curved from lying in one position too long, and it's just a pain to deal with. You can cut long Anthurium stems back, and if you leave a few leaves on the stem, they'll sprout new growing tips (sometimes you can even root the tops in water, though that's hit or miss), so it's not like there aren't ways to deal with the problem, but it's not something I like in my plants, and I don't do the cutting-back thing, in general. It takes so long for them to bloom in the first place, I don't want to force them to start all over again, slowly rebuilding until they're capable of blooming again. Plus it's not like I need to be starting new cuttings. Too many Anthuriums as it is.

(Venus)

(Roxanne)

(Jill)
You can also see the burnt-tips problem on two of Jill's leaves, in that last picture.

So I'd say none of the four are winners, though none of them are terrible. Better red/white or red/yellow than pink/pink, at least.


UPDATE: The suit has been thrown out. (Apparently the federal court system is not the proper place to determine whether something is sinful or not, and also one cannot sue millions of defendants merely by identifying an attribute they all share: one needs to go to the trouble of naming them. Good to know.)

Obviously this is sort of a relief, because it's impossible for me to find a plant-sitter. But it's also a disappointment, because one only gets just so many excuses to go to Omaha in a lifetime, and here I've just had one snatched out from under me.⁵

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¹ Not really, obviously, as God and/or Jesus have not yet verified for the court that Ms. Driskell does in fact represent them. Though once that happens, obviously, we're gonna have to pick out something nice to wear and start calling hotels in Omaha, 'cause I bet they're going to fill up super-quick.
² Worse: I spotted scale on one of them (0267 "Natalie Attired") when I was flipping through photos on Wednesday. The news could have been worse -- the scale in question was small, looked like it might (might) also have been dead already, and wasn't on a plant I especially cared about, but obviously there's no perspective that makes this good news. I tried to determine whether the scale was also on any neighboring plants, with inconclusive results.
I haven't thrown Natalie out because she's in bud, and I'd like to see the flower before I decide what to do with her. Though I probably should: all indications are that she's going to be another pink/pink, and I certainly don't need another one of those. It's hard to work up the energy to do anything much about this particular problem, though, considering how long I've been dealing with the scale already and how many plans have failed to make it go away.
³ I plan to give the one non-red, 0580 "Marsha Marsha Marsha," its own post at some point in the near future.
⁴ (Because, yes, I was listening when the whole-plant photos were requested; it just takes time for that sort of request to work through my whole photo-processing-and-blogging system.)
⁵ For the record: nothing against Omaha. It's not actually someplace I dream about visiting someday, but that's not singling Omaha out for any special disdain: the list of places I think about visiting someday is very small. (1. Russia, because I once spoke poorly-accented broken Russian and can still read isolated words occasionally, plus I like the cold, though I have all but given up on that ever happening because they're not, like, super happy about the gays lately; 2. Sweden, because I have distant relatives and one friend there and I like the cold; 3. Denmark, because we're currently watching Rita on Netflix and I am pretending that the whole country is full of gay-friendly blondes with high cheekbones, nice furniture, and no problems any worse than teachers who just care too damn much about their students, plus now I can say "good morning" and "thank you" in Danish so I feel pretty prepared -- and I like the cold; and 4. Canada, because, well, there's the cold, and that's where we keep all the Canadians, plus I can say "good morning" and "thank you" in Canadian, too. But it's not like I believe I'm actually going to go any of those places ever; they just seem like places that would be more pleasant to go than some of the other options.) Omaha would be fine, though obviously I'd want to go in January.

Pretty picture: Sarcochilus Louise Elmore 'Elsa' x Melba

I'm willing to believe that this was a well-grown specimen, but I still wasn't particularly impressed.

It's the first time I've had a Sarcochilus on the blog, so it's got that going for it, I guess. There are some additional photos of the cross (though not the same specimen) in a thread at orchidboard.com. One of the commenters there says that he finds Sarcochilus difficult to grow, though I have no idea if that's a typical experience.

The orchid registry has a Tolumnia Louise Elmore, but no Sarcochilus Louise Elmore, so I can't tell you where that cross comes from. Sarcochilus Melba, on the other hand, is Sarcochilus hartmannii x Sarcochilus falcatus (Ref.)

Schlumbergera seedling no. 113

I'd say that number 113A is going to be the last new Schlumbergera bloom until October, but I've thought that two or three times before and then been proven wrong, so we'll just say that 113A is the last one from this particular run of Schlumbergera posts.

The color is fine, maybe even a little stronger than many of the recent first-time blooms,¹ though the shape leaves a lot to be desired -- it looked normal as it was opening, but the petals didn't stop reflexing when they reached the normal petal-reflex point. Instead, they kept reflexing harder and harder until I wound up with this:

Now, that's an exceptionally unflattering photo. It didn't look nearly that bad in person, from most angles. But even the more complimentary shots from that day were pretty extreme --

-- so I'm going to declare this another "dog" Schlumbergera like 008A "Frightened Dog," 060 "Wet Dog," and 084A "Downward-Facing Dog."

Fortunately, I had already spent some time looking on-line for dog-related names, so without agonizing over it at all, I'm going to call number 113A "Helper Dog," in honor of Allie Brosh and Hyperbole and a Half. (Relevant comic.) Which means, obviously, that the next "dog" bloom is going to have to be named "Simple Dog," and I'm all right with that.

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¹ (I'm thinking specifically of 035A "Patito," 099A "Dessert Room," and 111A "Morning Sun," which were all a little washed-out.)

Schlumbergera seedling no. 035

Seedling 035 is pretty close to the average result for my Schlumbergera seedlings: orange tips, light to medium pink tube, you know the drill. There are more impressive seedlings with this same basic coloration, but 035 is, you know, fine.

There were a ridiculous number of possible names for this one. I usually keep looking until something in my brain tells me I've got enough good possibilities to choose among, and for this one I never got that signal. Instead, I kept looking and kept looking, and when I stopped, it was because I was sick of it. So I won't list all the rejected names, just the ones that could be right for some seedling someday, but not this particular seedling.

Wealthy Street sounds like someone in the grip of a vocabulary malfunction trying to say "easy street." I love vocabulary malfunctions like that,¹ because if you hear the right error, it throws the idea into a whole different light. As an example, one of my two favorite moments from the current season of RuPaul's Drag Race so far was Puerto-Rican queen Kandy Ho on her way out the door following her episode-six loss: "It's a bittersweet moment, I'm not gonna lie. I would have wanted to stay longer, but I'm gonna go to Puerto Rico and rub it against other queens' faces, because I was here and you weren't." [emphasis mine]²

Pōwhiri is a Māori welcoming ceremony. It sounded like a nice name, potentially, but the pronunciation is tricky (even within New Zealand, there are apparently several ways to pronounce it), and I figured I probably also didn't understand what it was well enough to use it.

Ferris Wheel photos kept showing up (another one). There's nothing particularly ferris-wheel-like about the bloom, but I considered it anyway.

Ganesh came up again. I remain somewhat unnerved by elephants, though. Clearly I'm going to have to name one of them Ganesh sooner or later, but not this one.

I eventually whittled the list down to three possibilities. Lawyer Shark makes sense to me in a weird way. (We already have thresher sharks, angel sharks, goblin sharks, and nurse sharks -- why not a lawyer shark?)

Patito (Spanish for "duckling") could have been the winner, except that "pato" (duck) is also an anti-gay slur in some of the Spanish-speaking world,³ and after searching the internet for a while, I couldn't figure out quite how bad it was, or how much the slur meaning colored the mundane meaning, or whether "patito" necessarily had the same connotation, so as a name, it has some problems. I don't have a problem saying something weird or vulgar with the seedling names, but I do like to at least have a clear idea what weird or vulgar thing I'm saying.

And then "Habanero Candy." Not really excited about the name, but I did at least learn a couple things: 1) there's no ñ in "habanero, and 2) inserting stuff like ñ's into foreign words to make them sound even more foreign is a thing, called a "hyperforeignism."

So, "Lawyer Shark," "Patito," or "Habanero Candy."

Originally, I was feeling drawn toward "Patito," but concerns about homophobia and upsetting Spanish-speaking gays led me to eliminate it, and I went with "Habanero Candy." Except that that didn't sit well with me over time as I thought about it, so I looked again and was considering "Lawyer Shark." Though that seemed a little too edgy, or . . . something. So I did some searching on-line for "patito," and got the impression that it probably doesn't have the same connotations as "pato." I mean, among other things, there was a Disney-esque Mexican teen telenovela with a (female) character called "Patito" for about a year, which you'd think wouldn't have happened if "Patito" had the same slur potential as "pato." And most of the other references that came up in a search⁴ are related to the story of the ugly duckling (El Patito Feo), so it seems safe enough. And it's what I wanted in the first place. So: "Patito."

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¹ Though I'm easily driven mad by eggcorns, especially "for all intensive purposes," though if you want to upset me almost any of them will do. "It's a doggy-dog world," "baited breath," "poured over the pages of the book," "listen to your conscious," and "peaked curiosity" are also all super-distracting. I think the deal is, if I hear it once, it's interesting and kind of funny; if I hear it over and over, it makes me want to smash things.
² The other of my favorite moments from the season is the reveal of Katya's "Baberaham Lincoln" outfit in the third episode, which isn't on-topic at all, but you should still see it. And if you're not at work or easily offended, there's a video.
³ I know, right? I mean, obviously what hurts about a slur is the tone and intent behind its use, not the literal meaning, but I can think of much, much gayer-seeming birds. I mean, flamingos, hello? Yet apparently mallards, at least, are pretty damn gay. Who knew?
⁴ (a search undertaken through DuckDuckGo, appropriately enough)

How Righteous Is Our Maple Tree?

This righteous.

I have no idea what a tree has to do to get a halo, but clearly, this is a very, very good tree.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 082

Yes, Schlumbergera seedlings can still bloom in colors other than orange. Sometimes lots of colors other than orange: this one starts out pink and light yellow (as a bud), becomes red, orange, and white as it opens, and then turns pink/magenta as it ages. So the photos in this post may not look like they came from the same plant -- but they did.

It was pretty exciting to see a new array of photos from TinEye, not to mention a little disorienting (where did all the orange go?) but this was one of those rare cases when I was able to settle on a name without having to consider and reject them one by one.

First, an honorable mention: I think this is the first time I've submitted Schlumbergera colors to TinEye and had it suggest a photo of a Schlumbergera back.¹ So I thought about making it a MS Excel joke and calling it "Circular Reference."

But the name I settled on was a combination name from two different photos. First, I got new fruit-related suggestions from TinEye. Ordinarily I get mostly tomatoes, and occasionally grapefruit, but what came up for 082A was a lot of cranberries, strawberries, and pomegranates. Strawberries in particular. (one, two, three) In person, there really is something sort of strawberryish about the color: it would definitely fit. And I'm very fond of strawberries. So maybe "Strawberry-_________".

Second, one of the photos that came up showed a person who reminded me very, very strongly of someone I used to know. It wasn't that person, of course; it was someone about twenty years younger, and from a different country. But the resemblance (the hair! the facial expression!) was strong enough that a lot of memories and feelings about that person welled up, and I realized I was probably never going to have a satisfactory resolution to my life's story with that person, and although I was basically okay with never having that resolved, all the feelings were still there, at something very close to their original level of intensity, and it was surprising and sort of uncomfortable.

I was sure there was probably some word for that experience, and I figured that if there were, I would probably find it at The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, since that's the sort of thing he specializes in, but I didn't find anything that seemed right. So then I tried asking MetaFilter² for nomenclatural help, and they suggested several terms for the person in the photo.³ Not everything worked for what I was intending, but four stuck out as plausible things to name a seedling:

Schadengeist (the idea was "harm-ghost," in German, though Ivynettle says it doesn't really come across that way)

Madeleine (from the madeleine in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, as well as a character, Madeline, in Hitchock's Vertigo, which I don't think I've seen; my understanding is that Madeline's role in the movie involves the same person-who-strongly-resembles-another-person situation as my experience)

Saudade (one of those words that winds up on "untranslatable in English" lists a lot; my understanding is that it's roughly "bittersweet nostalgia for something irretrievably lost," in Portuguese, but thefreedictionary.com has a more elaborate article about it)

Revenant (a person who returns after a long absence, often a ghost or spirit that's returned from the dead but not necessarily)

My understanding of German is minimal, and "schadengeist" seems to emphasize harm more than the situation warrants -- yes, stuff with this person was painful at the time, but it's been many years since I've seen them, and seeing the photo of their double wasn't scary or painful as much as just really surprising and intense. And "revenant" didn't really work on the grounds that they're neither actually dead nor actually returned.

I had more or less decided that I wanted to work "strawberry" in there somewhere too, so that left "Strawberry Saudade," which has a pleasing sound to it and is more or less emotionally accurate, or "Strawberry Madeleine," which emphasizes the shock-of-remembering thing more, plus is a thing that might actually exist. (I was eventually able to confirm that they in fact do exist.)

Ultimately, I liked the concreteness of Strawberry Madeleine more than I liked the consonance of Strawberry Saudade, so Strawberry Madeleine it is.

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¹ Flickr people apparently don't take a lot of photos of orange Schlumbergeras.
² Oh yeah -- I signed up for MetaFilter a while back. I'm "Spathe Cadet" there. (That groan you just made inside, over the pun? That groan took me more than a year to settle on. I would have joined MeFi ages ago if I hadn't been so worried about choosing the right user name.)
³ Which I'm deliberately not linking the photo, by the way, because the only conceivable thing linking it to an actual person publicly could accomplish would be to make it weirder and more personal. I feel like it's already pretty weird and personal.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum (sukhakulii x Big Boba)

The International Orchid Register was unable to find a "Big Boba" in any genus. Google and DuckDuckGo¹ hadn't heard of it either. This could mean that it's just a very new hybrid, but that's unlikely since it's old enough to be used in crosses which are old enough to appear, in bloom, in an orchid show. So either the IOR is a lot less comprehensive than I had been led to believe, the name "Big Boba" has been invented by a retailer, or it's what's left over after the original name was mangled by a show exhibitor. From past experiences with the show tags, I'd put my money on the last option, but I checked "Big Bubba," "Big Bob," "Big Buba," and "Big Bobba," and didn't get any hits on those either, so it'll remain a mystery, I guess.

At least Paphiopedilum sukhakulii definitely exists; it's quite popular with breeders. (see previous posts: 2012 orchid show, 2012 again, and my first (and last) attempt to grow my own Paphiopedilum.


Also, as long as you're here: there are still Schlumbergera cuttings to be purchased, if you're interested in doing so. Prices are $7 for one plant, $11 for two, and $15 for three; this includes shipping. I'm planning to mail them out at some point in mid to late May, depending on the weather. There are currently at least one available pot of cuttings for:

008B "Candor"
010A "Semantic Satiation"
019A "Belevenissen"
024B "Bryce Canyon"
025A "Clownfish"
026A "Brick Wall"
028A "Phil Collen"
028B "Neon Like"
030A "Diwali"
031A "Baby Carrots"
057A "Pyrotechnic"
078A "Art Party"

Photos and additional information at the original blog post.

I also started a new batch of cuttings this week, which should be ready to mail in July:

023A "Stoked"
054A "Helpful Gesture"
055B "Fort Venus"
073A "Laurie Anderson"
082A "Strawberry Madeleine"
088A "Cyborg Unicorn"
099A "Dessert Room"
111A "Morning Sun"

So e-mail if you have any interest in that,² and if not . . . you probably stopped reading a while ago.

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¹ (= Bing)
² mrsubjunctive3@outlook.com, without the "3"

Schlumbergera seedling no. 055(B)

055B is as close as any of the seedlings have gotten to looking like the seed parent, 'Caribbean Dancer,' but 'Caribbean Dancer' is just red, while 055B starts out orange-red and gets redder and redder with age. The tube color intensifies too, from pink-magenta to a darker magenta-magenta. It's not unusual for Schlumbergera blooms to get darker and/or redder with time, but this is an exceptionally dramatic (and pretty!) case. Not a huge bloomer, but better than a lot of them on their first time out: I think I got three or four flowers total.

I only came up with twelve name options with TinEye; possibly I wasn't in the right mood for it. I suppose that might make it easier to choose one, though. Let's see how it goes:

Let's see. So Good Cop Bad Cop is out on the grounds of being long. Prototype doesn't really make any sense. Pork Butt is amusing to contemplate but obviously, painfully wrong.

I find Pit Bull almost interesting, but I've also been naming the really terrible blooms "_____ Dog," and that might be confusing. You might or might not be crazy about 055B, but whatever it is, it's not a dog.

There's nothing especially Loopy about the flower, so we'll toss that one.

Fiction (Fictions? Fictional?) seems like just begging for something confusing to happen. ("I'm sorry? You're looking for a fictional cactus? Do you know what 'fictional' means?")

It's not impossible that Shocktop might be trademarked.

Gasworks probably doesn't have the most pleasant associations for people, and doesn't really make any sense anyway.

I like the idea of naming a seedling Hovercraft, but can't come up with any rational defense for doing so, which makes me think I probably shouldn't.

Which leaves us three options: Invitation, Fort Venus, and Secret Intensity. I like all three to some degree, but there are problems with all of them too.

Invitation is a neutral to good word, on its own; generally people like being invited to things, I think, right? I mean, it's usually less upsetting than not being invited to things. It's a little generic, but I don't imagine it's been used before for a Schlumbergera. I can imagine it working.

Fort Venus is a twist on the photo's "Venus Fort," and I like the contrast: the sexy, feminine Venus juxtaposed with the ugly military reality of "fort." On the other hand, I do already have a "fort" bloom,¹ and maybe it's too early to be repeating words?

Secret Intensity sounds like it wants to be some kind of personal hygiene product.² Or maybe it's what the journalists write about you after you go on your killing spree.³ It's just vague enough to seem like it means something, without really meaning anything. Also there's nothing particularly secret about the seedling, as far as I know. Though I suppose if there's something out there being all obvious and BLLLEEEEUUUURRRRRG then it's really not much of a secret.

In the end, I think I like the concept of "Fort Venus" more than I care about repeating words, and it just kinda looks like a "Fort Venus," so that's what we're gonna call this one.

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¹ ("Sofa Fort")
² Though I suppose "intensity" is not something one normally wants in a personal hygiene product. ("Hmmm, let's see . . . Summer's Eve, RepHresh, Massengill . . . Oh! Intensity! That sounds like the one I want!" "This deodorant is intense, brah!" etc.)
³ ("Though most people only saw a mild-mannered plant breeder who cared about his husband, dog, and collection of tropical houseplants, Mr. Subjunctive possessed a secret intensity few people ever glimpsed.")