Anthurium no. 0696 "Jessica Wild"

I'll spend most of this post talking about something only tangentially related to Jessica, but let's evaluate her first.

The blooms are okay -- the shape and color are fine, and although the thrips don't exactly leave the spathes alone, the damage shows up less on this color. The blooms are pretty small, so far, but several of the other seedlings produced bigger inflorescences after they were moved to a bigger pot (most notably 0360 Heidi Gosique, whose spathes are among the largest in the whole group of seedlings now: her first blooms were merely average). I don't feel like I necessarily need another red/red so badly that it's worth the space a larger pot would take, but the point is that Jessica's not to be dismissed just for having small spathes.

Mostly the same story with the leaves, though the leaves are pretty large, which is another reason to think that the blooms would get bigger under the right circumstances:

A little thrips damage here and there on the leaf, but we've seen worse. And the plant as a whole is okay.

For the moment, I think the plan is to hang on to Jessica and see what she does next. So far, I've only seen two blooms, and there's no big hurry to throw out a bunch of seedlings at the moment, so there's still time for her to do something impressive.

Meanwhile, I was bored last Saturday, and one thing led to another, and wound up plugging various things into a Markov chain text generator and saving the outputs for several hours. At this point you may be asking yourself, what is a Markov chain text generator? It's actually surprisingly difficult to explain, and the Wikipedia article has a lot of math in it which I, frankly, do not understand. But it's basically a simple computer program that takes a bunch of input text, and then tries to generate more text like the input text, by looking at what words or letters tend to follow other words or letters. Like, suppose you input the months of the year, in English:

january february march april may june july august september october november december

The program will look at what letters tend to follow other letters -- for example, two months begin with "ju," three months end with "ary," three other months end with "ember," that sort of thing -- and then starts generating words based on that. Given the first letter "m," for example, a Markov chain text generator that's only looking at one letter at a time will follow that "m" with an "a" some of the time (following the examples of "march" and "may"), and "b" some of the time (following "september," "november," and "december"). And then once the second letter is chosen, let's say it was "b," the next one has to be a letter that follows "b" in the input text, so it could be an "r" (from "february") or an "e" (from "september," "october," "november," and "december"). Repeating that process enough times will give you garbage like this:

juausembery july july jauaptepry junuly ner se nobry july mbectovember nober mbeceruly ser aril st march jaril anul noch mbembept ar juanovept apry aril ar mbecemanuapry ay anovery mber anugusebembrily seruguly aptobemberctembepteptept japt ay obery juguguanunery janustocemaril auguarcebe over juapr jusemapter

If you look at it hard enough, you can piece together how all of those strings of letters happened, based on the input.

You'll also see that sometimes the program recreates words from the input: "july" is in there three times, and "march" is there once.

Some of the online Markov text generators will give you the option to modify the rules a bit -- looking at more than one preceding letter at a time, or whatever -- but that's the basic idea.

So. The point is, I fed a bunch of different sets of text into this particular generator, including a set of proposed and already-used Schlumbergera-seedling names, and a set of proposed and already-used drag queen names, as a way of generating some more ideas to evaluate. Neither set worked incredibly well, to be honest, but I did get a few things that made for plausible names, though sometimes I had to clean them up a little first. It helps that ridiculously long drag queen names are more acceptable than ridiculously long Schlumbergera seedling names. From the drag queens (Anthurium seedlings):

Penne Pilates Las DuBois • Randi Iman Duran • Regina Creme • Billy Hilda Horror-Black • Nurse Leia Fridgaica • Cally Sheetah • Chanel Syrup • Anya L. Sans-Amor • Normika • Kimora Le Glüm • Laganza • Charlie Charmi • Cookie Mae Cousins • Fricky • Julieboo! • Lady Bellionzo • Linda Harpoonshine • Mink Martin • Mercedes Prayer • Rae Reshae • Sister Dharmani Evergay

Are they great? Well no, not necessarily (though I find myself weirdly drawn to a few from that list, especially Penne Pilates Las DuBois, Anya L. Sans-Amor, and Lady Bellionzo). And of course there's a lot of chaff to sift through.¹ But it's a lot easier for me to go through a list and say no, no, no, maybe, no, yes, no, maybe than it is to come up with a bunch of ideas off the top of my head, so anything that can generate a lot of ideas to evaluate is useful even if most of the ideas are garbage.

I was less successful getting anything useful from the Schlumbergera seedling names because they have to be shorter and make some kind of grammatical sense, but in at least one case, swapping out one word made a name significantly less cliched, and maybe better,² and there was an amazing, 101-character-long trainwreck: "Varidgy Circelicel Like Charporectuart Prophoreporle It Frogentarich A Wat Casted To The Chably Banja." Possibly (but probably not) useful:

Prophecy Of The Door • Admission Of An Owl • Credibility Monster • Inappropriately Icy • Message From Heaven • Brave Popular Babe • I Know You're Well • I Want To Continue • The Wrong Gorgeous • Women On The Beach • Accordion Problem • Golden Gate Bride • Lady Of The World • Partially Correct • Show Me You're There • Cat Congressman • Coconut Shrimp

So if you find yourself in need of a way to generate a lot of names for something, and you have some idea of what sort of results you want, and you have the time to look through thousands of garbage results in order to get a few dozen usable items, a Markov chain text generator is one possible tool you have available, along with search engines,³ pun generators, throwing long lists of words at one another randomly and sifting through the results, crowdsourcing recommendations, and, you know, believing in yourself and using the power of your own imagination or whatever.

I should also take the opportunity to draw your attention to Postcards From the Frontiers of Science, a Tumblr blog whose author has been using Markov-like techniques to train computers to come up with band names, action figures for 1980s-era toys, paint colors, recipes, fortune cookie texts, car models, pick-up lines, fruit, knock-knock jokes, and various other things. (The recipes are particularly delightful.)

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¹ A dozen of the longer drag name trainwrecks:
Chocean Curzawaynettanderstormand
E’Adapez Faheins ChtestcQue Eveeltatyabedilyary Ranttisheercy Meie Ganndaby Bell
Bix Dre Wanna Gadioa Stela Basiylohavedileh Dy Ale-Movije
Canaumouicay Hiarilen Ch Lang Cabelll Fielisdwe Su
Casber Havenna Babubrences Speci Lole Belly Punadeth
Tumotipe Deton Pe Shie Me Te Baven
Cheldydsis Dar Ittivilooxthule Ronenur
Vetengoto Viceynghnelhleva Motrton Ph Malo Roeysa Vonp'Dèovena
Chideniqus L'Aralwfe Inrguneya Veamue Lang
Jaumon F. Fola Vangi Tiabisomnsty Pamoug Lo
Joun ozausun Monoyle Ols Ma Rea Pann Qun Bariara Dit
Kenixie Chaploss Zadow Alis Flo Deccanofficham
² ("Let's Make A Deal" --> "Let's Make A Drink")
³ At least a few of the pun-based drag queen names I invented came about by repeating a name to myself over and over until it started sounding like something else, then plugging the "something else" into a search box and letting autocomplete propose an ending. For example, I'm pretty sure this is where "Coraline Pilates" came from ("Coraline" --> "core ali__" --> "core align pilates" --> "Coraline Pilates"), and one could also get "Laverne Onions," "Leslie Vittolone," "Emily Andivery," "Cora Engenierce," "Sasha Mess," "Brandy Sheena Gunn," and "Alex Blaine Layder" this way, though that's probably not actually how I got all of them.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 042

Eleven more Schlumbergeras to name and then we'll be done.¹ Be strong.

Only one bloom on seedling 042A, and I only got two photos: one before the petals had fully opened --

-- and one the next day (further down in the post).

Our name candidates this time are It's Oh So Quiet, Mary Tyler Moore, and Retreating Light.

It's Oh So Quiet is a song from 1951, originally performed by Betty Hutton,


and covered by Björk in 1995 on the album Post:²


Before this post, I was only aware of the Björk version,³ and although I had seen in the CD liner notes⁴ that she hadn't actually written the song herself, I didn't actually believe that she hadn't written it herself. It's perfect for her.

Mary Tyler Moore is Mary Tyler Moore. Come on. You know who Mary Tyler Moore is.

Retreating Light is the title of a poem by Louise Glück, from her book The Wild Iris, which I've mentioned on PATSP before (1, 2). It is reproduced here, for anyone who might be interested (and it's only 32 lines long; you have time).⁵

So this is kind of an impossible choice to make; they all seem perfect in one way or another, and they're all exactly the same number of characters to type. But since a choice has to be made, I'll drop Retreating Light on the grounds that it's a bit abstract, and also vaguely depressing, and I'll lose It's Oh So Quiet because the song is very loud-soft-loud-soft, whereas the seedling is not really loud at all.

Which leaves us 042A Mary Tyler Moore, and that seems only appropriate considering she's the blog's patron saint or whatever. I mean, you should have expected it would win as soon as you saw the finalists.

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¹ (The bud I mentioned on seedling 352 still hasn't dropped, as of 1 June, but I still think it's going to before it opens.)
² Point of interest: the video won the 1996 MTV Video Music Award for Best Choreography, and was nominated for six others.
³ (and to be honest I find Hutton's version kind of grating; it's the vocals, not the band)
⁴ (Paper included with physical CDs that contained the copyright information and performance/writing credits. Liner notes would also sometimes include lyrics, though only for bands that didn't need them. If the singer was really mumbly or screamy, you'd just have to guess at the words, as there was no internet to look things up on yet.)
⁵ I should possibly note that the poem I like best from The Wild Iris is not "Retreating Light," but either "Witchgrass" or the "Vespers" on p. 37.

Anthurium no. 0473 "Margo Howard-Howard"

Margo produced a first bud fourteen months before actually blooming. It's fairly common for the first bud or two to drop off before one manages to open, but fourteen months is an awfully long time to wait, and she's lucky I was patient.

The bloom is unobjectionable. Not a rare, one-of-a-kind color combination, but at least it isn't pink/pink or red/yellow.¹

Not that impressed with the foliage, though, mostly because of thrips damage.

And as it's aged, the stem has become long and floppy, which doesn't show in the whole-plant photo below because it's an old photo, taken when the first bud appeared.

Margo is one of relatively few seedlings with 'Orange Hot' as the seed parent; about half of those seem to wind up with orange spathes, and the others have been some shade of red or pink. Margo's only sibling, the late 0480 Walterina Markova was pink/purple,

0480 Walterina Markova

so I'm hard-pressed to guess what Margo's pollen parent might be. But I suppose the plant breeding wouldn't be any fun if I always knew what was going to happen and why.

Margo's a keeper for the time being, though considering how little she's bloomed and the state of her leaves and stem, I don't really see her being a long-term, permanent resident.

I should possibly also mention that Margo Howard-Howard is not one of the names I came up with. There was a performer who worked under this name in New York City in the 80s, and someone wrote an autobiography under the name (I Was a White Slave in Harlem), but the autobiography is thought to be at least partly a work of fiction. (At best, it's full of unverified/unverifiable details.) There's something interesting going on there, but I don't have the time to look into it, and it's complicated by the existence of an author named Margo Howard, making the drag queen difficult to search for. If you're motivated to look into it and happen to find something informative, leave me a link or something.

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¹ Which are themselves fine and attractive combinations, but as you'll remember from the collage of the first 100 blooms, there have been a lot of both, so any seedling of any other color has a much better shot at being kept around.

Schlumbergera seedling no. 011

011A is a keeper, though I suppose technically it's redundant, since there are other seedlings that produce very similar color combinations (most notably and consistently 021B Birthday Dinner, 055B Fort Venus, and 088A Cyborg Unicorn). It's probably good to keep some semi-duplicates around anyway, though, as the seedlings can die (the original 083A Psychedelic Bunny appears to have died at some point over the winter or spring, due to unknown causes -- I had the foresight to take cuttings, but that was still awfully disappointing). It might also turn out to be the case that seedlings I think are similar actually aren't: maybe one of them has a superior growth habit or is more resistant to bugs or whatever.

And even if I couldn't justify keeping duplicate seedlings around, this is a color combination I really like.

Thus far, 011A's main weakness seems to be thrips; it also wasn't a particularly heavy bloomer.

The name finalists: Annie Lennox, Bring It, Full Battery, Pure Energy.

I don't think I actually need to explain any of these, as the last three are pretty self-evident,¹ and Annie Lennox was considered for 066B Sigrid The Haughty and 079B Haleakala.

I'm pretty happy to let Bring It drop: it was the last one I added to the list, and I wasn't that happy with it. And Full Battery doesn't quite work either: the colors are energetic, which is what I was going for, but an image search confirms that "full battery" is almost always indicated by the color green, so it wouldn't make intuitive sense to a lot of people.

Which leaves us with Annie Lennox vs. Pure Energy. Lennox has certainly done this color combination before, notably in the video for "Why", and an image search also turned up this photo.² Lately she's been favoring black, or occasionally white, which maybe makes the color combination a little less obvious but whatever, we don't have to let that bother us if we don't want to.

Pure Energy is a little more abstract. Image search confirms that there are a lot of products with that name already, and also that when people put images to the idea of "pure energy," the dominant colors are blue and purple, so it's also not a great intuitive match.

Though it's not like I'm ever going to get a blue or purple Schlumbergera, so we should probably not let that bother us either.

So. Considering that Annie Lennox has been under consideration before, while Pure Energy has not, and that it's marginally more color-appropriate for this seedling, I guess I'm going to go with 011A Annie Lennox.

We may or may not see Pure Energy come back again; it more or less works for the person I intend it to honor, but I can think of at least two alternate names that don't overlap with energy supplements, motor oils, etc.

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¹ (though Pure Energy is another of those personally-significant-people names, if you're keeping track of those)
² Hello, 1980s makeup!

Schlumbergera seedling no. 128

Another seedling that produced only one flower. Also another white-blooming seedling. So this'll probably be quick.

The name finalists are: Hesitant Disclosure, Iceflow, Lyle Lovett, and Sloths Arrive Late.

Not sure where Hesitant Disclosure came from; possibly a random word combination. It fits, though: as you can see from the photo, the flower either never completely opened, or opened at a point too late for photo-taking.¹

Iceflow is another name suggested some time ago by Paul.

Lyle Lovett is the Grammy-winning country singer and songwriter. I kind of love his work,² and every time I've ever seen him in interviews or tapes of live performances or whatever, he always comes across as grounded and humble, and goes out of his way, every single time, to acknowledge the people he performs with. He's been on my celebrities-I'd-like-to-hang-out-with-sometime list for a good 20 years or so now, and I live in constant dread of finding out that he's secretly horrible, because that would wreck me.³

Sloths Arrive Late is probably from a random word combination. It's also true. Like, if you invite any sloths to your party, tell them the party's beginning at least four hours before you want them to show up.

So. Of the four, Hesitant Disclosure is the most abstract and least appealing, so it's easy to drop. The remaining three, though, are a difficult decision. Iceflow and Lyle Lovett are color-appropriate;⁴ Lyle Lovett and Sloths Arrive Late are both emotionally appealing (the latter is at least sort of funny); Iceflow and Sloths Arrive Late are both safer than naming a seedling for an actual person.

There's a good chance I'm not going to wind up keeping the seedling anyway, since there are better white-bloomers around,⁵ so possibly it doesn't even matter in the long run. So maybe I should go with the joke and call this one 128A Sloths Arrive Late, leaving the more serious options open for later seedlings.

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¹ I can, of course, take pictures whenever I like, so there's no point when it's too late, exactly. There are periods when it's not worth it to bother, because photos taken when it's very dark outside are often no good for posting.
² I've mentioned before that "North Dakota" is one of my top ten favorite songs of all time:


And the album on which it appears, Joshua Judges Ruth, would be great for the song titles alone, but then the songs are also pretty great. See "Church," "Since the Last Time," "Baltimore," "Family Reserve," "She's Leaving Me Because She Really Wants To," "Flyswatter/Ice Water Blues (Monte Trenckmann's Blues)."
Honestly, I could spend all day recommending Lyle Lovett songs; I ran into him at the perfect moment in my life to hear what he was saying, so a huge number of his songs are really important to me.
³ Not an exaggeration.
⁴ (White makes sense for Lyle Lovett because a disproportionate number of his official music videos are in black and white. Sloths tend to be more brown or gray; sometimes they even end up kind of green, because algae can grow on them.)
⁵ Mostly thinking of 193A Arcade Gannon, 283A Migaloo, and the still-unnamed 290A, but 119A There Would Be Peace, 127A Cooperating Banjos, and the unnamed 135A are decent as well.
This seedling, 133A (no name), and 190A Snezhana are all pretty much duds, though, unless they decide to be amazing next year.

Anthurium no. 1181 "Tajma Stetson"

Tajma's¹ most notable trait is that she blooms a lot. The blooms aren't particularly large, but they're pretty long-lived, and I'm fond of the seedlings with spathes that start out light orange and age to pink (among them 0097 Colin Ambulance, 0596 Alisa Summers, and 0813 Arya Reddy), so she has potential.

(newer bloom)

(older bloom). The color difference isn't huge, but it's there.
The weak spot is the foliage. It's not always bad,

but the thrips seem to find the leaves more delicious than I would like.

A minor point of interest is that, like 0097 Colin Ambulance, Tajma has the NOID purple for a seed parent. I'm not sure why Colin and Tajma turned out so not-at-all-purple,² or whether they could produce purple-blooming seedlings, but it might be worth trying to find out.

Unfortunately, it's going to be a long wait: so far only 0097 Colin Ambulance has reproduced,³ and his seedlings are both still very young (1756 Adelaide Evening and 1757 Alex Blaine Layder, sow date 10 June 2016) and I only potted them up in late April 2017. So if they survive, those two might be purple, but we won't know until February 2018 at the earliest, and that's too much of a long shot to pin any hopes on.

Verdict: probable keeper, though not necessarily worthy of promotion to a larger pot.

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¹ No idea about the name; Tajma Stetson is a real performer, not a name I invented, but I don't know anything about her.
² Too lazy to look it up, but if I remember correctly, the pigment responsible for making some Anthurium blooms purple is either pink or purple depending on cell pH. So it's possible that the pigment is being produced, just not in a way that makes it show up as purple.
³ I'm actually surprised at how few of the F1 seedlings have surviving offspring right now. I mean, there are still a lot of F2 seedlings, but of the 853 I started, only 368 (43%) are still around. And a lot of the survivors are only survivors because they're too young to have fallen apart yet. This was more or less the case with the F1 generation as well, of course: most Anthurium seedlings don't survive long enough to bloom.
At the moment, the big genetic winners from the F1 generation are 0223 Patty Cake (24 surviving offspring), 0234 Ross Koz (40), 0259 Tasha Salad (20), and 0330 Faye Quinette (54), but many of those survivors were recently potted up and probably won't live long enough to bloom.
If you look at how many F2 seedlings have actually bloomed, producing nice flowers that might be worth taking to an F3 generation, the winners are:

0005 Chad Michaels (top left), seed parent of 0694 Brad Romance (top right), 0698 Landon Cider (center left), 0721 Chandelier Divine Brown (center right), 0723 Tara Dactyl (bottom left), and 0842 Pretty Punasti (bottom right);

0200 Mario Speedwagon (top), seed parent of 0802 Dana International (bottom);

0234 Ross Koz (top), seed parent of 0805 Triana Hill (center) and 0811 Alma Children (bottom);

0273 Wes Coast, seed parent of 0728 Sister Dimension (center) and 0788 Owen McCord (bottom)

Schlumbergera seedling no. 239

Seedling 239A is primarily notable for being the third and final of the second-generation seedlings to bloom this year: all three were the offspring of 025A Clownfish.¹ 240A Schwa wasn't impressive, but 244A That's My Purse was nice. This one's in between the two: an uninteresting color combination, performed pretty well.

For name finalists we have: Plow The Seashore, Rediscovery, and Soft Light.

Plow The Seashore and Rediscovery have both come up previously as vaguely poetic names that say oh, this again.²

Soft Light was previously considered and rejected for seedling 034A Wahine.³

So, of the three names, Rediscovery is the most abstract, and consequently the least interesting to me. And Soft Light may not be a good seedling name, considering that later blooms are not always the same color as earlier ones. Which leaves only 239A Plow The Seashore.

I think I can be happy with this. (Fingers crossed that seedling 237 will bloom at some point and I can use Neptunium then.)

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¹ As I write, there is a small possibility that one more second-generation plant is going to bloom in the basement: seedling 352A has a very tiny bud on it. 352A would also be the first descendant of 082A Strawberry Madeleine to bloom.
I don't expect this to happen this year, though: a lot of buds drop off, especially in the basement, and although plants have produced flowers in the basement under artificial light before, it's rare. (Maybe only twice? 025A Clownfish and 200A Breakin' The Law are the only ones I can recall.) I mean, if the bud opens, I'll tell you about it, but it's enough of a long shot that I'm not getting excited just yet.
² The original Latin version is arare litus, and (wikiposedly) was coined in Erasmus' Adagia as a figure of speech for "wasted labor."
³ A fourth name, Neptunium, was included on the original list because I was under the impression that the most stable isotope of neptunium was Np-239, and the seedling's ID number is 239A. This turns out to be incorrect: the most stable isotope of neptunium is actually Np-237, and there is no element for which isotope 239 is the most stable isotope.
Which sucks, because before I tried to verify this I was really leaning toward naming this seedling Neptunium. Somehow it just seems neptunium-like.
I've also long felt like neptunium gets unfairly overlooked, because it's between the much more useful/common/destructive uranium and plutonium. I feel bad for neptunium. (Historical periodic table trivia: uranium, neptunium, and plutonium were named after the planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.)
More trivia: there's a really good chance that there's some neptunium within fifty feet of you right now: many smoke detectors contain tiny amounts of americium-241, which decays to neptunium-237. The amount of neptunium in a smoke detector increases with the age of the detector.
And yes, just in case you were wondering: americium and neptunium are very toxic if ingested (so don't eat your smoke detectors, no matter how old they are, and don't take them apart either), but the danger of cancer from having radioactive smoke detectors in your house is much smaller than the danger of fire from having no smoke detectors in your house. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to scare you and/or take your money.
Apologies for the digression, but like I said, I was pretty sure I was going to name this one Neptunium, so I've been having all these neptunium-related thoughts, and I didn't want them going to waste.

Anthurium no. 0771 "Nina Flowers"

The first inflorescence Nina produced was disappointing; the spathe didn't open fully, and the spathe color was in the same general red-pink area as so many other seedlings. But the second time, it was actually kind of nice:

I mean, yes, the color hasn't changed and is kind of ordinary. But it's well-executed. If this is more typical of what the seedling's going to do in the future, then it might deserve the name Nina Flowers.¹

The leaves are mostly free of thrips damage, and the plant as a whole is fairly full, with a moderate amount of suckering.

So, Nina's probably a keeper. My only regret is that the bloom isn't anywhere near as dramatic and stunning as the queen. Certainly there's a place in my world for solidly executed blooms that aren't particularly flashy, but it seems odd to name one of those "Nina Flowers."

In fairness, though, I'm not sure there are any Anthurium seedlings which are complicated and dramatic enough to deserve the name. "Nina Flowers" might be more appropriate for a Schlumbergera: they're at least more angular and complexly shaded than Anthuriums.

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¹ (A prominent Colorado-based drag queen with heavily stylized but impressive and precise makeup skills; also the namesake of my now-deceased anole.)