Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Rumble Among the Jungle, Match 4.4

Results for matches 3.15 and 3.16:

It used to be clear enough who was going to win after the first day or so of voting that I could write most of these posts in advance and then just pop in the actual numbers when the voting ended, but lately I'm having to wait until the very last possible moment to start writing.

Aeonium spp. ended match 3.15 with an 8-vote lead over Tillandsia spp. (air plants), 62 to 54, which surprises me enormously. (I've tried, but just don't see the appeal of Aeoniums.)

Match 3.16 found Calathea cvv. defeating Agave spp. by 60 to 56. They're both nice plants, so I wouldn't have been surprised by either outcome, as long as the vote was close. (If Calathea had clobbered the shit out of Agave, or vice-versa, then I would have been surprised.)

The report for round 3:

Four families were removed from contention: Araucariaceae, Bromeliaceae, Cycadaceae, Polypodiaceae. So it goes.

Still in the competition: Amaryllidaceae (1), Apocynaceae (1), Araceae (4), Asparagaceae (2), Cactaceae (1), Crassulaceae (2), Gesneriaceae (1), Malvaceae (1), Marantaceae (1), Orchidaceae (2).

My prediction skills have improved: I called every match correctly this time except for 3.13. (I thought y'all would go with Adenium obesum instead of Haworthia spp.) So that's a big 94% correct for Mr. Subjunctive.

All three of the plants I'm watching closely (the one I would prefer to see win, and the two I think are most likely to win) made it into round 4 intact.

Speaking of round 4, here's today's match:

Match 4.4
Schlumbergera cvv. (holiday/Thanksgiving/Christmas cactus) vs. Hibiscus rosa-sinensis (tropical hibiscus)

Center and top left: Schlumbergera 'Caribbean Dancer;' others are NOID.


All unidentified cvv. except left center ('Mrs. Jimmy Spangler') and bottom right ('Sunny Wind').




2 comments:

phantom_tiger said...

Somewhere a tillandsia is weeping softly. How can bromeliads be out? Tsk. It really is an end of the world scenario.

Paul said...

I was disappointed in Aeoniums' victory over the tillandsias. Aeoniums are "okay", I guess. Tills are just niftier plants, IMO.

This match is a b**ch. Schlums are nice in that they are not highly prone to spidermites, and the flowers do have an awfully cool design. However, I've never had a Hib "shatter" on me nor have such an issue w/ rootrot. Also, with warm bright light, a hib will keep pumping out the blooms and the palette of colors for the flowers is much broader than that for schlums .......

*sigh* Decisions, decisions .......