Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum philippinense var. laevigatum

"Philippinense" is a difficult word to spell correctly. One L and two P's, as opposed to the more common "Phillip," with two L's and one P. Though I suppose if you spend a lot of time thinking or writing about the Philippines, you probably get used to it. (Though, then, do you start having trouble spelling "Phillip?")

I knew Phragmipediums could have ringlety petals (or are they sepals?), but I feel like I didn't know until now that Paphiopedilums could as well.

We haven't seen Paph. philippinense var. laevigatum, as such, on the blog before, but we've seen a named clone:

Paphiopedilum philippinense var. laevigatum 'Twin States' (2011 show)

one non-laevigatum variety:

Paphiopedilum roebelenii (more correctly, Paph. philippinense var. roebelenii) (2012 show)

and three of its hybrids:

Paphiopedilum Berenice (2012 show)
Paphiopedilum Judge Phillip (2012 show)
Paphiopedilum St. Swithin (2011 show; St. Swithin remains one of my all-time favorite orchids)

So I think it's safe to say we've got most of the Paphiopedilum philippinense bases covered.

Schlumbergera time again

After the first round of selling Schlumbergera seedling cuttings in May, I took another batch of cuttings, and they're ready to go now. So if you passed up that opportunity to buy some, here's a second chance. Prices are the same as the first round: one plant for $7, two plants for $11. If you want more than two, I'm allowing that this time around, but I strongly prefer it if you select an even number of plants to purchase.¹ They'll be shipped as boxes containing two plants each, so four would be $22, six would be $33, etc. Those prices include shipping.

The previous disclaimers apply:
• they're mostly three cuttings, stuck in a square pot 2 inches on a side.
• U.S. only.
• you have to let me know which ones you're interested in well before buying them, because quantities are limited and there will probably be conflicts. E-mailing gets you dibs on a given seedling, but neither of us is obligated to do anything until money has been exchanged.
• Though I have tried my best, I cannot guarantee that bloom color, frequency, etc. will be the same for you in your home as they are for me in mine. Mutations happen, cuttings get mixed up, plants grow differently in different environments, etc.
• Rooted plants only; I won't send unrooted cuttings.²
• I still haven't seen scale or thrips on any of the Schlumbergeras in the house, ever, and consequently think that they're unlikely to transmit bug infestations to your other plants, but it is still hypothetically possible and you should be prepared to take appropriate precautions, like quarantining them, spraying them with a pesticide, or washing them in soapy water, on arrival.

A couple seedlings that weren't available in April/May are available now, most notably 055B "Fort Venus" and 082A "Strawberry Madeleine." Here's the full list as of 14 July 2015:

008B "Candor"
Colors (petals / tube): orange / light pink; dark orange / light pink
Bloom Frequency: slow
Quantity Available: 1
Comments: Might be the same plant as 008A "Frightened Dog," just producing more shapely blooms. I haven't seen a second bloom from "Frightened Dog," and "Frightened Dog" happened before I started marking the branches to indicate different seedlings.

010A "Semantic Satiation"
Colors (petals / tube): orange / pink; ages to red-orange / pink
Bloom Frequency: slow
Quantity Available: 2

012A "Sofa Fort"
Colors (petals / tube): orange / pink
Bloom Frequency: medium
Quantity Available: 1 ready now; 3 waiting on new growth from one or two cuttings
Comments: One of my personal favorites; the orange and pink harmonize better on this one than they do on some of the other orange / pinks.

019A "Belevenissen"
Colors (petals / tube): orange / white
Bloom Frequency: medium
Quantity Available: 2
Comments: As nobody wanted it during the April/May round, the pots available for this one are significantly larger and fuller than those of a lot of the other options.

022A "Sad Tomato"
Colors (petals / tube): red-orange / white; ages to red-orange / light pink
Bloom Frequency: medium
Quantity Available: 1
Comments: The color doesn't do much for me personally, but it blooms well, the blooms last a normal amount of time, and the color is strong, so I think it's objectively a good seedling, just one I'm not especially into.

023A "Stoked"
Colors (petals / tube): dark orange / white
Bloom Frequency: fast
Quantity Available: 2 ready now, 3 waiting on new growth from a cutting
Comments: Another of my personal favorites, though sometimes the petals . . . break off? I'm not sure what's going on; I just know that a few times after taking photos, I then notice pieces of petals on the floor or wherever, and they seem to be mainly from "Stoked." Either I'm being unusually rough with it, or it's unusually brittle.

024A "Safety Vest"
Colors: orange / white
Bloom Frequency: slow
Quantity Available: 1
Comments: Very similar to 025 "Clownfish." Infrequent blooms, but was one of the latest to bloom during the spring, so it's possible that it's less strict about temperature and day-length requirements than many of the others. 023A "Stoked" is a better version of the same thing, if one is available.

024B "Bryce Canyon"
Colors (petals / tube): light orange / white; yellow-orange / white
Bloom Frequency: crazy fast
Quantity Available: 1 ready now, 1 waiting on new growth from some cuttings
Comments: Does drop a lot of buds, but it starts out with so many that it still winds up producing more flowers than any of the others. Vigorous. Odd color which may or may not be to your personal taste.

025A "Clownfish"
Colors (petals / tube): dark orange / white
Bloom Frequency: slow
Quantity Available: 1
Comments: Earliest to bloom, and still seems to be the least picky about getting absolute darkness at night, but for all that, it doesn't produce very many flowers. Reason is unknown. 023A "Stoked" looks a lot the same but blooms much better.

026A "Brick Wall"
Colors (petals / tube): orange / white; pink-orange / white
Bloom Frequency: medium
Quantity Available: 3 ready now; 2 waiting on new growth from one or more cuttings
Comments: Probably my overall favorite orange from the group; it doesn't come across in the photos at all, but there's a weird softness to the color that I find very appealing, and the flowers practically glow at certain times of day. I mean, they all do this to some degree or another (golden hour + orange bloom = glowy), but "Brick Wall" regularly stops me in my tracks. I was surprised there wasn't more interest in this one in April/May.

028A "Phil Collen"
Colors (petals / tube): orange / very light pink; ages to orange-red / light pink
Bloom Frequency: medium
Quantity Available: 1 ready now; 2 waiting on new growth from one cutting

028B "Neon Like"
Colors (petals / tube): orange / pink
Bloom Frequency: medium
Quantity Available: 2
Comments: Similar to, and a reasonably good substitute for, 012A "Sofa Fort," though "Sofa Fort" is a slightly yellower shade of orange.

030A "Diwali"
Colors (petals / tube): orange / pink
Bloom Frequency: slow
Quantity Available: 2
Comments: The odd not-fully-opened thing has been consistent in all blooms so far, but it doesn't bloom often, so I'm not sure that's necessarily genetic. Other seedlings have done similar things from time to time, so it's possible "Diwali" was just having trouble getting its shit together. We'll find out this fall, I guess. As nobody wanted it during the April/May round, the pots available for this one are significantly larger and fuller than those of a lot of the other options.

031A "Baby Carrots"
Colors (petals / tube): orange / white; ages to orange / light pink
Bloom Frequency: medium
Quantity Available: 1 claimed, 1 available
Comments: As nobody wanted it during the April/May round, the pots available for this one are significantly larger and fuller than those of a lot of the other options. The parent plant bloomed a little later into the spring than a lot of the other seedlings.

054A "Helpful Gesture"
Colors: red / pink
Bloom Frequency: slow
Quantity Available: 1 claimed, 1 available, 2 waiting on new growth from one cutting
Comments: Not a heavy bloomer at all for me so far, but when the blooms appear, they're pretty nice. Or at least they're not orange.

055B "Fort Venus"
Colors: orange-red / pink; ages to red / magenta
Bloom Frequency: fast
Quantity Available: 3
Comments: One of the three available pots only has one cutting in it, but that cutting has a developing fruit on it, which you could use to start your own seedlings if you really wanted to. (No idea who the pollen parent was, and I can't guarantee that any resulting seedlings would be worth growing. But how will you know unless you try?) "Fort Venus" is as close as any of the seedlings have been to the parent, 'Caribbean Dancer,' and the similarity is especially strong on older flowers.

057A "Pyrotechnic"
Colors (petals / tube): pink-orange / white; ages to orange-pink / white
Bloom Frequency: medium
Quantity Available: 1
Comments: Another one I really like, probably based on the color being pinker than most of the oranges. Fairly substantial color change from orange to orange-pink as the blooms age.

061A "Leather Fairy"
Colors (petals / tube): light orange / white
Bloom Frequency: slow
Quantity Available: 1 ready now; 1 waiting on one cutting
Comments: Looks an awful lot like the NOID peach that I think was the pollen parent, and I think has only produced one flower to date, but the cuttings rooted like champs so at least the plant is fairly vigorous? I mean, this is definitely the one to get if you're big into stems. I'm not going to promise flowers.

073A "Laurie Anderson"
Colors: orange / pink
Bloom Frequency: medium
Quantity Available: 1
Comments: Pretty ordinary orange / pink. It started late and didn't have a very long bloom season, so I didn't really get to know it as well as some of the others.

078A "Art Party"
Colors (petals / tube): red / pink
Bloom Frequency: very slow
Quantity Available: 1
Comments: The original plant has only produced one flower so far. 054A "Helpful Gesture" isn't a heavy bloomer either, but it's probably a slightly better plant, with a very similar color. The original seedling has a less upright growth habit than a lot of the others, though the cuttings so far have been pretty vertical.

082A "Strawberry Madeleine"
Colors: orange-red / white; ages to red-magenta / white
Bloom Frequency: fast
Quantity Available: 1 ready now; 1 waiting on one cutting
Comments: Probably the most impressive of the later seedlings, in that it produced a lot of blooms all at once, in April, and then the blooms change colors in an interesting way as they age, too.

088A "Cyborg Unicorn"
Colors (petals / tube): orange / pink
Bloom Frequency: fast
Quantity Available: 2 ready now; 2 waiting on one cutting
Comments: Although the flower in the top two images looks different from the flower in the bottom two, I'm pretty sure both blooms are from the same seedling. 'Caribbean Dancer' is prone to the occasional streaky bloom too, and they're not produced consistently on the same branch or anything as far as I can tell, so I think it's just a Schlumbergera thing.) "Cyborg Unicorn" is one of the stronger, more floriferous orange/pinks, though it's a darker, more magenta pink than, say, "Sofa Fort" or "Neon Like," which have lighter, more delicate colors.

099A "Dessert Room"
Colors: orange / pink
Bloom Frequency: medium? Can't actually remember. . . .
Quantity Available: 1

111A "Morning Sun"
Colors: orange / white
Bloom Frequency: slow
Quantity Available: 2
Comments: I can't remember if this was actually a crappy seedling or if it just happened to photograph badly.


And that's all there is for this round. There won't be a third Schlumbergera-selling post like this this year, because there's nowhere for me to get new cuttings from, so when these are gone, they're gone until next spring. If you're interested in any of these, send me an e-mail and we'll get the payment, mailing addresses, and so forth straightened out. I'm hoping to mail plants out on or before early August, so they can have a couple months to acclimate to their new homes before it's time to produce buds.

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¹ Because I have boxes that will fit two plants more or less exactly. If you really, really want a large odd number, something can probably be worked out, but it simplifies things a lot for me if you stick to even numbers.
² The main reason being that the seedlings have had so many cuttings taken from them already that they need time to recover before I can take more.

Pretty picture: Trichosalpinx orbicularis

Well. "Pretty" picture is stretching the truth a bit.

I like the leaves, though.

Random plant event: Ctenanthe burle-marxii

For a plant in the Marantaceae, Ctenanthe burle-marxii has been pretty easy to grow, and I've managed to propagate it a number of times (by divisions), and it's been relatively unbothered by pests. Apparently the Ctenanthes are just like that -- this post, which mainly talks about growing them outdoors, says they're pretty easy-going.

Also, if you're wondering: the "c" is silent. Dave's Garden says it's pronounced "tee-NANTH-ee;" I've been pronouncing it "ten-ANTH-ee." Potato, pohtato, maybe.

No Ctenanthes are commonly-sold around here; besides C. burle-marxii, the only one I've ever seen for sale was C. lubbersiana, and it's never at a size or price I could afford to get.¹ C. burle-marxii itself was never actually for sale at the ex-job while I was there; my recollection is that shortly after I got Nina, I noticed a tiny, two- or three-leaved plant growing out of the soil on the greenhouse floor, and took it home for her terrarium, which it eventually took over, though I don't have any great photos of how much it took over. I was assuming when I brought it home that it was a Calathea, and then I thought Stromanthe for quite a while; it took a long time to figure out that it was a Ctenanthe.

In any case. The point being that it hasn't been a particularly difficult plant for me, but it's also never gotten me terribly excited, either -- it does its thing, and gets bigger, and it's handsome, and I like it, but it's never done anything new. Until now.

Which, this isn't especially pretty either, but it's the first time I've seen one bloom, so it's, like, exciting on a technicality, or something. And it's blooming a lot. This photo only shows three inflorescences, but that's because I couldn't fit the whole plant in the photo and still have the background. Really it's at least six:

Anyway.

I should maybe mention at this point that although I'm not quite back yet, I'm expecting to slowly ramp back up to a more frequent posting schedule in the next few weeks. (I hope you want to see some pink Anthuriums!) At some point relatively soon, we'll see round 2 of the Schlumbergera seedlings for sale as well, if there's anyone interested in those.

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¹ I've seen them at Lowe's before, but in like 10-inch pots, which is too big. The ex-job had a couple once, also in huge pots, and for like $40, and I asked if they'd sell me a cutting cheap and they said yes but then it never actually happened for some reason. Which is probably just as well, 'cause it's not like I need any more plants that get huge.

Pretty picture: Phalaenopsis I-Hsin Balloon

So at the show this year there were two specimens of I-Hsin Balloon, and just like last year, I loved them both. Something about this particular hybrid really does it for me.

I was also pleased to note that the name on both was "Balloon," though I sort of knew before I even got to the show that that was likely how the tags would read.¹ A couple days prior to the show, I got this comment on the 2014 post from "Marcia:"

I own this plant and I registered it exactly as Hausermann's label stated...it will be in the 2015 show at Wallace's...sure like to know who you are.

Which I'm not really that interested in whose fault it is that it was tagged incorrectly, since it's easy enough to see how it could have gotten changed. It's easy to drop (or add) a double letter. A smudge or piece of dirt could turn a lowercase "n" into a lowercase "r" easily enough, and while in most contexts "ballor" would be a nonsense word, it's not like "I-Hsin" is everyday English, either.

So anyway. I would like it if sellers, in particular, would treat plant names as important enough to double-check. I feel like the ID is part of the product, and if you can't be bothered to proofread your tags before you send plants out, that says something about what else you might be skipping over on your way to make a buck.² I can't say that I've ever declined to buy something I wanted solely because of mistagging, but it does get me to look more closely at a plant, and often if the ID is wrong, there's something else wrong with the plant too.

It would be nice, also, if exhibitors in orchid shows would also double-check names, since orchid shows are a big place where the general public gets exposed to orchids, and if they see a plant they like and want one just like it, it's helpful to be able to search for it by its actual name. Plus, you would think that if awards are being given out, it'd be extra important to make sure that you have the names right. If you can get a blue ribbon for growing the biggest, most colorful, most beautiful Neostylis anyone's ever seen, but it's actually a Laeliocattleya, clearly something's gone wrong with the show.³ But Marcia says that was how the tag had it, and I don't doubt her, so whatever. It'd be nice, but it's not that big of a deal.

In any case. I left Marcia a comment back at last year's post, but she didn't respond, so we still haven't met. We could have -- at the show, I knew who she was,⁴ and I could have gone up and introduced myself -- but 1) I wasn't feeling especially social that day to begin with, no reason, just sometimes I wake up not wanting to deal with people and that was one of those days,⁵ 2) call me paranoid, but "sure like to know who you are" sounds a little ominous if you read it the right way,⁶ and 3) when I first saw her, she had kind of a sour expression on her face, which is understandable in that by this point the show had been going on for several hours already, and I imagine it's kind of exhausting to be part of an orchid show even if you're an extrovert and you like being in orchid shows. I mean, I assume she's probably a perfectly nice person and she would almost certainly not have gotten me banned for life from the orchid show or framed me for murder or anything like that. But given 1) and 2), I had pretty much decided that I wasn't going to say hi anyway, so it didn't take much of a push to make that decision final. Next year, maybe.

Phalaenopsis I-Hsin Balloon = Phalaenopsis Sogo Lisa x Phalaenopsis I-Hsin Gem (Ref.)

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¹ Still with the "Dtps.," though, which is no longer accurate. Though given that botanical genus names have been in upheaval for several years now, and occasionally revert to their original designations, I can understand not leaping to correct it to "Phal." immediately.
² Though even there, things will happen that are out of your control. I've complained a number of times about the Exotic Angel brand (started by Hermann Engelmann Greenhouses -- apparently in order to sell plants you have to have a double-N in your name somewhere, which is why I'm thinking about changing my name to Mr. Subjunnctive -- but Engelmann was purchased last year by Costa Farms) being terrible at getting IDs correct, and I think mostly that's because Engelmann didn't give a shit, but, it's also the case that customers will switch tags around, with or without malicious intent, or that a tray of plants will get knocked over and dumped out on the floor on the day when the person who knows what everything isn't scheduled to work.
It remains to be seen whether Costa will do a better job with the tagging than Engelmann did, though I am not optimistic, considering my previous interactions with them: see the Strelitzia incident or the more recent Anthurium incident.
³ Not that anyone would make that particular error: I'm using a deliberately ridiculous example. But you see the sort of thing I mean.
⁴ (Name tag, plus looking for Marcias on the Illowa Orchid Society's web page to confirm a surname)
⁵ Those days are becoming more frequent as I get older, a troubling trend when extrapolated into my 80s. I blame Facebook.
Not because Facebook necessarily has anything to do with it; I'm just trying out this thing where when I don't like something, I hold Facebook responsible for it. You'd be surprised how often Facebook-blaming makes sense.
Though now that I think about it, by the time I'm in my 80s, I will likely be dead, living in a radioactive hellscape searching through debris for small rodents to eat, or in a robot-staffed nursing home, and in all of those situations, being antisocial is unlikely to be my worst problem.
⁶ "Dr. ChaosDoom, stroking the Siamese cat in his lap and smirking at the video monitor, said 'I'd sure like to know who you are' to Captain HeroGuy. Outside, thunder crashed."
This reading is maybe even more understandable if you imagine that Captain HeroGuy had been complaining, a lot, and in public, about Dr. ChaosDoom's 2011 and 2012 world-domination plans being really poorly-spelled and factually inaccurate.

Pretty picture: Epidendrum stamfordianum

Didn't mean to just stop posting like that, but I've been busy, and the plants aren't doing anything especially noteworthy anyway. There have been new Anthurium blooms, and lots of new Anthurium buds which will eventually become blooms, but they've all fallen into the same red/yellow, red/white, and pink/pink categories I've shown you several times before, and it's hard to feel any urgency about making a blog post to show them off. I have a few ideas for longer posts still, but never seem to find any time to work on them, so . . . probably not going to be posting a lot in the near future either.

But we'll always have the orchid-show orchids. This particular one photographed badly -- for every shot I took, the camera made a different guess about where to focus, all of them wrong -- and it might not have been that interesting even if it had photographed better. Epidendrums seem to concentrate more on quantity of flowers, rather than quality. But the colors at least coordinate well with the color scheme on the blog at the moment, and the photo looks a little better at full-size. (Which possibly means that I should have cropped it differently.)

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum sukhakulii x (Black Cherry x sukhakulii)

A lot of the orchids in this year's show were pleasant enough, but not new, or new but not all that pleasant. The more years I go, the harder I am to surprise, I guess. In any case, this was probably as close as I got to a jaw-drop moment, just 'cause it's so dark:

Which, it's not that it's so pretty, exactly. I just didn't know that paphs could do this. (Not saying it's not pretty, though. When a plant's unusual enough, though, pretty is sometimes sort of beside the point, and I think that's what's going on here.)

Paphiopedilum Black Cherry = Paphiopedilum Fremont Peak x Paphiopedilum Red Maude (Ref.)

Paphiopedilum sakhakulii is pretty colorful, but lumpy; an image search says that Black Cherry is smooth and very dark red-purple. (It's really nice, actually. Like, if I could grow paphs, Black Cherry would be a paph I would want to grow.¹) This plant seems to take more after Black Cherry, despite being 3/4 P. sakhakulii.

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¹ Please don't tell me oh but you can! They're really easy! -- it's been tried. It didn't go well. I can only give plants the care that I can give, and that does not currently include care suitable for paphs. Perhaps someday my circumstances will be different -- I'll have a greenhouse, or fewer plants, or something -- and then we'll be open to trying the genus again, but for right now, even though I technically could, in practical terms, at the present moment, I can't.

Question for the Hive Mind: Trifolium pratense

There's nothing new going on here at the moment -- believe me, I tried to find something better than this to talk about¹ -- so I thought this might be a good moment to ask a question that's been rattling around in my head for a couple years instead.

Why do people not deliberately cultivate red clover (Trifolium pratense) in their gardens?

I mean, yeah, I get that it's weedy and would tend to take over, given enough time, but gardeners overlook that in other plants, so it doesn't seem like that would be enough to disqualify it. And rabbits like it, but again -- that doesn't stop anybody from growing lots of other stuff. And it has good points. The flowers are pleasant, and numerous,

and even mildly fragrant. Bees love them. They improve the nitrogen content of the soil. There's a medicinal use for them.² The plants quickly reach a mature height of about two feet tall and then stop getting taller, which seems to me like it should be a good quality for an outdoor plant.

So I'm just wondering. Last year, I let a couple grow in the Portulaca bed, and that seemed to work out fine for me,³ so I'm just wondering why nobody else does it. I assume there's a reason. Or several.

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¹ There have been a few new first-time Anthurium blooms (0335 "Donna Fanuday," 0346 "Lois Carmen DiNominatre," 0360 "Heidi Gosique," 0373 "Shangela Laquifa Wadley," 0597 "Raven"), but Shangela is hideous, Donna, Lois, and Raven aren't fully opened up yet and have so far photographed terribly, and Heidi is basically a repeat of 0357 "Rhea Litré." I mean, I'll get to all of them eventually, I'm sure, but as a group they're kind of underwhelming. And in any case I'll have to sort through a bunch of photos first.
² I'm not generally that impressed by claims that a garden plant can be used medicinally, because I really kinda feel like people are better off not gambling with self-administering unproven chemicals they don't really understand, at an unknown dose, with no supervision by a medical professional, but some people consider it a point in a plant's favor if it's "useful" for something, so that seems like it should be a point in favor of deliberate cultivation.
³ Didn't this year, because they were getting so big so early that they threatened to shade out the reseeded Portulaca grandiflora before it even had a chance to germinate. And yes, that means I've had a lot of seedlings to pull up. But the Trifolium is a much easier weed problem to deal with than, say, dandelions, maple tree seedlings, Oxalis, lamb's quarters, or crabgrass. If not for the Portulaca, I would have been perfectly happy to let the clover have the bed this year.