Pretty picture: Tolumnia Genting Orange

This one may be fairly new. Not sure. The orchid registry site where I look up ancestry information has three Tolumnia "Genting" greges:¹ Genting Angel, Genting Fairy, and Genting Rainbow. There are also several Dendrobiums named Genting something or another. But there's nothing listed for Genting Orange. Which is possibly all for the best, considering that Genting Orange is in no way orange.

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¹ "Greges" = the plural of grex, the term to describe all offspring of a particular cross. In a pinch, "greges" might also be useful if you know a lot of people named Greg and want to refer to them collectively. (Wait a minute. Wouldn't that be "Gregs," you may be asking. Ordinarily, sure. But if you feel like using "greges" anyway, what's to stop you? It's not like this is a situation that comes up a lot. If someone challenges you, just tell them, in a mildly condescending tone, "It's Latin." Referring to Latin is a good way to shut down all kinds of conversations, not just pluralization-of-Greg ones. Though every once in a while you run into someone who actually knows something about Latin, so be careful.)

Anthurium no. 0267 "Natalie Attired"

Natalie isn't amazing or anything, just another pink / pink, but at least she's sort of a pretty pink / pink.

Nine days later, the same bloom looked like this:

so I'm guessing that Natalie will be another pink that fades to white, as discussed in the post about Anthurium no. 0215 "Nathan Ofithlam."

The foliage is unremarkable,

and the plant as a whole is mildly unpleasant due to a long internodal distance,

but the real test for Natalie is going to be whether or not she can shake the light scale infestation she picked up a few months ago. I've been looking at the leaves pretty closely when I water, and rubbing off any visible scale with my fingers. Sometimes I rub the leaves in hopes of catching some non-visible scale, which so far has worked better than you'd expect it to, though it's slow, obviously. But I haven't wanted to spray with white oil for fear of causing the bloom to abort before opening, and imidacloprid granules are a non-starter because I think it would all just wash through the soil before the plant picked it up. I don't have a lot of faith that imidacloprid is helpful in my circumstances anyway.

So time will tell. If the scale goes away and stays away for a while, I'll probably up-pot Natalie and try to sell her at the consignment store; if not, I'll throw her out. Space in the basement is way too precious to waste on a scaley pink / pink, even a fairly nice scaley pink / pink.

Anthurium no. 0415 "Darby Dragons" (again)

So Darby has bloomed again. After she failed to get nearly everything right the first time -- tiny spathe, short peduncle, short-lived bloom, thrips scars everywhere, crappy foliage, boring color -- I was waiting to see whether the next one would be any better. Sometimes they do need a practice bloom before they really get going, and when it comes to the seedlings, I'm all about the second chances.

But you know what? The second bloom wasn't any better.

Most recent bloom (12 May 2015).

First bloom (3 April 2015).
It might actually be a little larger than the first, but not such that you'd notice. The thrips damage is considerably worse. It's lived twice as long as the first bloom and is still going,¹ though longevity shouldn't necessarily count in its favor if this is how it's going to look. In person, the color is unchanged; I recognize it looks different in the photos, but it's not. The newest leaf has as much thrips damage as the older ones did. The peduncle is not only basically the same length, it's bent as well, so that the new spathe faces directly downward.²

So 0415 "Darby Dragons" gets to be the first Anthurium seedling that sucks so much that I throw it out even though it's bloomed. Twice. And exceptionally early. Which is a little depressing, but I suppose it frees up space for a seedling that doesn't suck.

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¹ (As of 25 May, when I'm writing this.)
² (Which may explain why it's showing up a different color in the new photo.)

Pretty picture: Guarianthe aurantiaca

It's gotten to the point where it almost wouldn't feel like a trip to the orchid show if I didn't get to see a Guarianthe aurantiaca (formerly Cattleya). Here are the ones from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014.

I don't know what happened in 2013 that made me miss it. I mean, I assume there was probably one there.

Anthuriums no. 0215 and 0290

When I saw that 0215 "Nathan Ofithlam" was producing a bud, I wasn't expecting it to be anything terribly exciting. Generally, light pink buds turn into light pink spathes, and you cannot even imagine how sick of pink and red I am right now. Plus, the light pink spathes seem to be especially attractive to thrips, and thrips scars are especially visible on light pink spathes, so the upshot is that seeing a light pink bud is almost worse than seeing no bud at all.

But Nathan has turned out to be sort of a pleasant surprise:

Only a few thrips scars, this is as close as any seedlings have gotten to producing white spathes,¹ and it's got that odd tiny second spathe at the base of the spadix.² So it's a lot more interesting than it should have been.

It's not otherwise especially exciting; the leaves are only okay --

-- and the plant as a whole is still pretty small, considering its age (38 months in the photo).

But it'll get to stay at least until it's clear whether the color and double spathe are genetic.

Speaking of possibly-genetic oddities, one unusual bloom that I had assumed was probably only that way because I'd missed a watering or something, that of seedling 0290 "RuPaul Charles" --

-- is looking like it might actually be genetically determined. The plant was producing a second bud in April that got stuck on its own cataphyll and strangled in early May, but the bud had opened up enough by the time it died to show what the shape was going to be, and it looked the same. Much smaller, but the same shape.

I'd still like to see it produce another bloom of the same size, all the way to maturity, before I get too worked up about it, but this is encouraging.

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¹ A few others are in the neighborhood, though: 0041 "Anna Graham" has very light orange-pink spathes that get even lighter as they age, for example.
A number of the pinks don't start out very light in color, but fade with age to the point where they're essentially white by the time they die (0066 "Barbara Seville," 0083 "Carmen Adairya," 0097 "Colin Ambulance," 0126 "Erin Dirtylondry," 0202 "Mason Pepperspray," 0244 "Sara Problem," 0273 "Wes Coast," 0275 "Yvette Horizon," 0279 "Tristan Shout," 0594 "Charity Case"), as you can see in the below photos. I've tried to get pictures of the same individual bloom, when I had them.

Elapsed times between photos for each bloom:
0066 "Barbara Seville:" 42 days
0083 "Carmen Adairya:" 94 days
0097 "Colin Ambulance:" 54 days
0126 "Erin Dirtylondry:" 30 days
0202 "Mason Pepperspray: 50 days

Elapsed times:
0244 "Sara Problem:" 86 days
0273 "Wes Coast:" 132 days
0275 "Yvette Horizon:" 30 days
0279 "Tristan Shout:" 81 days
0594 "Charity Case: 89 days
One other seedling, 0235 "Rowan DeBoate," produced a very light spathe the first time out, which darkened quickly, and thereafter produced spathes that started out dark pink.

Left: first bloom, from 3 December 2013.
Right: most recent bloom, 15 April 2015.
At this point, we can't rule out the possibility that Nathan is doing what Rowan did, and his next bloom will be much more ordinary. But let's try not to be a total buzzkill realist; it's not like I have a lot of positive Anthurium-related things happening right now.
² I knew that doubled spathes and spadices were possible: the Anthurium-breeding book includes a named variety called 'Hokulea,' which consistently produces blooms with two spathes, which point in nearly-opposite directions; a variety named 'Satan,' which produces 2-4 spadices per bloom; and a variety called 'Hidden Treasure,' which usually makes no spadices at all, but occasionally produces them in the leaf axils or the typical spot. I was unable to find photos of any of the three on-line, unfortunately, but if it helps at all: 'Hokulea' is light pink / red-purple; 'Satan' is white / light yellow; 'Hidden Treasure' is a pink-orange Obake with white spadices.

Pretty picture: Phalaenopsis I-Hsin Black Jack

Hey, so: I am still alive, but for various reasons haven't been able to post lately.

Or, technically, I suppose I'm able to post, in the sense that no one is physically preventing me from doing so, but I've found it difficult to post. That's probably going to continue for a while longer, as I try to process another large batch of recent photos, but I haven't forgotten about you or the blog, and semi-regular non-orchid posting will resume eventually.

Now then.

This is a very dark Phalaenopsis, but there's an even darker one coming up in February. I find myself surprisingly impressed with both. (Though while I was taking this photo, another show attendee was telling someone that they really preferred the white ones. Judging by what I see in the background while watching TV, everybody else prefers white too.¹ I think this is clearly wrong, on the grounds that all white phals look exactly the same and are boring, but nobody listens to me.)

And yes, I see that the tag has this identified as a Doritaenopsis, but neither Doritaenopsis nor Doritis even still exist, officially, so I fixed it.

Phalaenopsis I-Hsin Black Jack = Phalaenopsis Golden Peoker x Phalaenopsis Leopard Prince (Ref.)

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¹ Since about 2010 or so, white Phalaenopsis have been taking up more and more "TV houseplant" positions, to the point where it's currently like 80% white phals in the stuff we watch around here. A startlingly large chunk of the remaining 20% is Ficus lyrata, which seems to be having a sudden cultural revival for no good reason I can think of.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Gina's Child

Paphiopedilum Gina's Child is, sort of literally, Gina's Child:

Paphiopedilum Gina's Child = Paphiopedilum Gina Short x Paphiopedilum rothschildianum (Ref.)

Though I have to think that if Gina actually loved her, she would have given her a name of her own, instead of just "Gina's Child."

Also: this is a crappy picture. I feel like it was probably a lot more winsome in person. My camera seems to do better with red-brown or otherwise dark Paphiopedilums than it does with yellow / light ones.

Anthurium no. 0580: "Marsha Marsha Marsha"

So let's just get it out of the way: the scale are back. I've seen scale on nine Anthurium seedlings in the last couple weeks.¹ So far, the infestation is localized to a particular corner of the basement, but it's not as if the scale stay still, so that means probably no Anthurium-selling this year. Which is perhaps just as well, since I hadn't made any real progress on deciding which seedlings to sell. (If you feel like you really, really want an Anthurium and don't care whether it comes with scale or not, uh, I guess e-mail me or something.)

The cause in this particular case is that I have had a Gasteraloe x beguinii for many years, and it got infested by scale, but I thought maybe I could clean off and restart four offsets and have scale-free plants again. The restart attempt happened in November, and by March, it was clear that I had not, in fact, managed to get the scale off three of the four offsets. So out those went. One offset appeared clean, though, so I let it stay. A week ago, while I was shoving its flat back into place on the shelf, I happened to snag a leaf from the single remaining Gasteraloe on something, and it broke off and fell into the flat of Anthuriums below. I didn't know that's what had happened at the time, but even if I had known, I might not have worried about it, since I hadn't seen scale on that plant for a while. But, there were enough scale on the leaf that fell down that they managed to colonize several Anthuriums in a short period of time. And so now there's a new outbreak to deal with.

The moral of the story: some plants cannot be de-scaled, and attempting to de-scale them anyway only compounds the problem.²

Which brings us to Anthurium 0580 "Marsha Marsha Marsha." I liked her well enough when I saw her bloom that I up-potted her to a 6-inch pot, but the only available space for the new pot was the general area that's experiencing the outbreak, and the outbreak's extent wasn't known at the time, so now she, too, has scale. We had best not get too attached to Marsha.

But. The bloom is pretty nice, more or less interchangeable with that of 0120 "Eliza Boutisecksis." Marsha's only the second orange / orange bloom I've seen,³ and appears to be long-lived, a normal size, and decently shaped. So she's got that going for her.

The foliage is okay. Marsha and her clone (or sibling) 0581 "Adam All" did something odd simultaneously in March, where a few of the larger, newer leaves on both plants developed odd lighter-colored squiggles throughout them, almost overnight. Subsequent leaves haven't had that problem, but the discoloration appears to be permanent on the affected leaves. Ordinarily, I'd assume that that sort of color change indicated a nutrient deficiency (or maybe overdose?), but since it's only happening to two closely-related plants out of several hundred, and those two aren't getting anything the other 700 don't, I'm sort of at a loss to explain. It's at least sort of pretty.

0581 "Adam All."

0580 "Marsha Marsha Marsha."

0580 "Marsha Marsha Marsha." I suspect this is the same leaf as the above photo, photographed six days earlier.
The overall plant is pretty nice-looking, too, as the seedlings go. Still pretty compact, no thrips damage.

But when I went down to the basement to check on the discolored leaves, I still found several tiny little scale insects to rub off the leaves, and I'm sure I didn't get them all. You never get them all. So Marsha is probably, ultimately, doomed. I don't want her to be, I intend to try to get rid of the scale even if it involves throwing out a bunch of other seedlings (and it probably will), but in the end I think I will probably fail, and Marsha will end up in the garbage. I don't feel particularly depressed by this: it's closer to a sort of weary numbness. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than being depressed.

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¹ 0173 "Judith Priest," 0209 "Muffy Stopheles," 0219 "Rhoda Horse," 0223 "Patty Cake," 0235 "Rowan DeBoate," 0267 "Natalie Attired," 0330 "Faye Quinette," 0577 "Pandora Boxx," and 0580 "Marsha Marsha Marsha." Judith, Rhoda, and Pandora had bad enough cases that I decided to throw them out rather than try to clean up the plants; it's probable that I should have done that with the other six, but it was hard enough getting rid of the three. Rhoda had never bloomed before, and had a bud, and I still threw her in the trash.
² Which plants? I have found that there's no point in even trying to salvage Agave, Aloe, Alworthia, Asparagus, Ficus, Furcraea, Gasteraloe, Gasterworthia, Hoya, Manfreda, Neoregelia, and Pereskia, because no matter what you do or how thoroughly you do it, they'll always come back, and in the process of trying, you'll often get yourself stabbed with spines, soaked with neem oil, or otherwise frustrated.
It's also pointless to try to rid Alpinia, Ardisia, Cyrtomium, Nematanthus, Podocarpus, Schefflera, and Zingiber of scale, but the experience is somewhat less horrible.
Occasionally, it actually is possible to eliminate scale from Albuca, Anthurium, Begonia, Coffea, Epipremnum, Hatiora, Haworthia, Hippeastrum, Murraya, Philodendron, Phlebodium, Strelitzia, Syngonium, and Yucca, though in many of those cases the solution is to cut the plant back to the ground and/or remove all foliage, and let it start over again, which is a drastic enough solution that it's not always going to be worth it.
Also it should be kept in mind that this only applies to the particular species of scale I'm dealing with, and in my particular home environment: I won't guarantee anything when it comes to other kinds of scale and other living conditions.
³ Maybe the third, if 0118 "Elijah Sturdabowtit" counts as orange / orange. Elijah is definitely orange / orange when the spathe first opens, but he changes to pink / pink so quickly that it's tough to put him in either category.