Friday, June 10, 2016

Anthurium no. 0440 "Elsa Friesanova"

I've been surprised at how few white spathes I've seen on the Anthurium seedlings. Considering that almost half of the first generation were from 'White Gemini' (white / yellow), I figured I would encounter a lot of whites, but it's apparently recessive; I get occasional very light pinks,1 but never a spathe that's actually white. Elsa's not white either, but she's close:


And the foliage is large, and has improved dramatically since I started blasting the leaves with water.


However. Thrips still damage the spathes, as you can see from the first photo. She's also had ongoing problems with scale, as have a lot of her neighbors. I've reluctantly resorted to imidacloprid on that whole shelf of plants, because while imidacloprid never seems to completely remove all scale from the house, in the short term, it does seem to be a good way to remove them from specific areas. Elsa was apparently already wet, and when I added a little more water to wash the imidacloprid toward the roots, a lot of her older leaves went yellow.

(on 7 June 2016)

So it's possible that I've successfully eliminated the scale by killing the plant; I'm waiting to find out.

(on 25 February 2016)

Even if the overwatering hasn't killed Elsa,2 though, she's probably not a keeper. I like the leaves a lot (really the picture above doesn't do them justice), but they're kind of all she has. As the number of plants solid enough to move up to 6-inch pots increases, I have to get pickier about all steps of the process -- which blooms are pretty enough to hang on to, what level of scale infestation is minimal enough to be optimistic about, that kind of thing.

-

1 The palest seedling to date is probably 0215 Nathan Ofithlam ('Gemini' x unknown), who was cool. The only bloom I ever got from Nathan had a small, secondary spathe, and I really wanted to see if that would happen again, but alas, he had problems with his roots, or I overwatered, or both, and he died before he could build a second bud.


(Not really pertinent to the post, but: the only other seedling to ever make a secondary spathe is 0282 Dave Trading. Dave has occasionally even hinted that he might want to make spathes for each individual flower on the spadix,


though none of Dave's secondary spathes have ever been as well-developed as Nathan's.)
2 Anthuriums will forgive you for too much water a lot more readily than for not enough, but there are limits in both directions.
I haven't counted it up, but my guess is that I've lost about twice as many plants to drought as I do to rot.


Thursday, June 9, 2016

Unfinished business: Leuchtenbergia principis

An update on the Leuchtenbergia seedlings today. I haven't had a lot to say about them because there hasn't been all that much going on. None of them have died since the last update, I think, though I've sold a few. Of the original fifteen, I'm down to seven, and I just moved those up to 3-inch pots on 2 June. (The first one of those I did may have been damaged in the process: the roots had stuck hard to the side of the pot, and I couldn't figure out how to get them out, so I tried jamming a thin metal rod in through the drainage hole, which broke the tip of the root because the root was right on top of the hole. I figured out how to get them out with less trauma after that, but until I did that first one, I had no idea what sort of roots I might find.

Seedling no. 2. Pot is 2-inch (5 cm) in diameter.

The seedlings don't look much like the young plants I've seen occasionally in stores, like these:


Specifically, my seedlings have more of a trunk on them already, and the leaves are curved instead of straight. Both things are probably due to me not having quite enough light for them, though I'm not sure. In their natural habitat, they're often shaded as seedlings, so they really ought to be more flexible about this than a lot of other cactus seedlings might. I don't know.

Seedling no. 6. Pot is 2-inch (5 cm) in diameter.

In any case: still here, doing fine. They've possibly sustained some thrips damage on the upper surface of the leaves; a while back I noticed that there were little scars appearing. I haven't actually seen thrips on any of them, and you'd think the seedlings' skin would be too tough for thrips, but that's the only explanation I can come up with. I've heard tales of woe regarding Leuchtenbergia and scale, but so far, I haven't seen scale on them. The species of scale I've been dealing with here seems to be particular about which plants it likes to eat (Agave, Yucca, Anthurium, Aloe) and which plants it doesn't (Dracaena, Coffea, Spathiphyllum, Schlumbergera), so maybe scale in general are a problem for Leuchtenbergia, just not my personal pet scale.

Seedling no. 12, after the repotting. Pot is 3-inch (8 cm) in diameter.

I started these seeds in May 2013, getting the seeds from an on-line supplier, so seedlings are just over three years old now. I've also cross-pollinated two adult plants in 2013. Both plants produced fruit, though I think I only collected seeds from one: I can't remember. In any case, I still have lots of self-produced seeds, in addition to the leftover online seeds, and I've thought about trying to start the self-produced ones outside this summer, but I'm not sure what I'd do with them all if they germinated. The species is an acquired taste, and not in particularly high demand, so although the seeds cry out to me to be sown (as all seeds do), I can't come up with a perspective that makes me feel like it would actually be a good idea to start them. So we wait.


Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Pretty picture: Masdevallia Bella Donna 'Lehua Snow Blush'

This was the only Masdevallia I saw at the 2016 show, which is a shame. I know they're often not very exciting, by comparison with all the fancy Cattleya alliance orchids, and it's possible that their cultural requirements don't mesh well with those of flashier plants, but I like seeing Masdevallias all the same, and felt a little cheated that there was only one. It wasn't even a particularly good one, in my opinion.


As for the ancestry, Masd. Bella Donna definitely exists, and is

Masdevallia Bella Donna = Masdevallia coccinea x Masdevallia datura (Ref.);

and there's definitely a clone called 'Snow Blush.' But 'Snow Blush' is, as you'd expect from the name, white. It's not clear to me whether Lehua Snow Blush is an actual, official separate clone, but orchidsbyhausermann.com lists it as a separate thing and gives it a HCC/AOS designation besides (Ref.), so . . . probably? Hiloorchidfarm.com shows both white and purple forms of "Lehua Snow Blush," with only the purple one getting an HCC/AOS tag, and I'm not sure what that means -- possibly the color is variable depending on cultural conditions?


I assume the "Lehua" in "Lehua Snow Blush" refers to the producer / breeder Lehua Orchids, but they have, they say, "lost interest in" Masdevallias, so they no longer sell them, and no longer have a page listing their cultivars. They include "Lehua" as part of the name for their two Phalaenopsis, though, so they've named plants partly after themselves before: it seems a safe bet that "Lehua Snow Blush" originated with them even if they no longer acknowledge it on their site.


Monday, June 6, 2016

Schlumbergera seedling no. 095

And today, we have the very last of the Schlumbergera seedlings which bloomed for the first time in the 2015-16 season. And wouldn't you know it, it's orange. What are the odds.


It did photograph pretty well. I'm especially interested in the fact that a couple of the petals (technically tepals, I think, but let's not quibble) appear to be slightly split in the center. Still not the most amazing seedling, but a little different, and we could be ending on a more boring note. So what would be a suitable name for this?

So. You know the drill by now. I tried free-associating, I looked at the list of names I've been compiling for the last few months, clicked the "random article" link on Wikipedia a dozen or so times, and nothing made me say aha! That is definitely the best name for this seedling! Waited for the ideal name to reveal itself right up to the (self-imposed but nonetheless real) deadline, and still, nothing. I was kind of hoping to go out with a bang, but nope. So, I'm going with Perturbed, another of the intentionally-opaque names meant to honor a significant person from my life. And now I have a few months in which to build up a list of potential names for next year.



Now I have some awards to distribute. I think I'm going to call them the Schlummies, unless someone can propose a better name. Winners have large photos, with names in boldface.


Most Improved Returning Seedling (2014-15 season)

021B Birthday Dinner

023A Stoked

082A Strawberry Madeleine

083A Psychedelic Bunny

099A Dessert Room

021B Birthday Dinner won both because it bloomed a lot more this year and because the blooms had much stronger colors. It was such a dramatic improvement that it's probably the reason the Schlummies exist: I wanted to talk about it so bad, but had no good excuse for doing so.


Best Overall Returning Seedling (2014-15 season)

021B Birthday Dinner

023A Stoked

078A Art Party

082A Strawberry Madeleine

099A Dessert Room

Not only did 082 Strawberry Madeleine produce a lot of blooms, it was very good at always having at least one bloom going at any given moment. It was also one of the first seedlings to produce a ripe berry and spawn some second-generation seedlings.


Most Floriferous New Seedling (2015-16 season)

018A Nudibranch

056A Demons Begone

079A Yayoi Kusama

099B Karma Cobra

105A Berry Rhubarb Fool

I'm a little puzzled about how this happened; for a first-time bloomer, 079A Yayoi Kusama had a ridiculous number of blooms, over a long period. At least some of the explanation is that she lucked into a particularly good location, but I never said the Schlummies had to be fair.

Actually, now that I think about it, 018A Nudibranch, 099B Karma Cobra, and 105A Berry Rhubarb Fool all also had unusually good locations, so one could argue that the only deserving seedling was 056A Demons Begone.


Best New Orange Seedling (2015-16 season)

015A Nielub

018A Nudibranch

056A Demons Begone

063A Broad Brush

212A Molly Ivins

It's hard to get too excited about the orange seedlings, since there have been so many, but 018A Nudibranch was both the earliest seedling to bloom, and one of the more prolific bloomers. Plus the form and the specific shade of orange weren't bad either, though the photo doesn't show this very well.


Best New Non-Orange Seedling (2015-16 season)

079A Yayoi Kusama

099B Karma Cobra

105A Berry Rhubarb Fool

107A Nova Prospekt

217A Blood Frenzy

"Non-orange" turns out to mean "red," pretty much. Not a ton of color diversity. See above for why 079A Yayoi Kusama deserves the win. I really like this photo of 107A Nova Prospekt, and it would probably win based on the photo, except that I think that was the only bloom it produced. Maybe Nova Prospekt can pick up the Schlummie for Most Improved (2015-16) next year.


Best New Color Combination (2015-16 season)

[no nominees]

I didn't think this was too much to expect, but . . . I guess it was. Maybe in the 2016-17 season we'll find something really new.


Best New Name (2015-16 season)

056A Demons Begone

066B Sigrid the Haughty

074A Crone Island

106A Jaws of Elmo

107A Nova Prospekt

I am just fucking delighted every time I happen to see Sigrid the Haughty on the spreadsheets. I mean, the other four nominees are all pleasant and personally significant in their own ways, but learning about Sigrid the historical/mythological figure was one of the best moments I've had in the last six months. Plus the seedling itself wound up being pretty good: not a lot of flowers, but the ones I got were of good quality.


Best Overall New Seedling (2015-16 season)

066B Sigrid the Haughty

074A Crone Island

079A Yayoi Kusama

099B Karma Cobra

105A Berry Rhubarb Fool

079A Yayoi Kusama is going to be insufferable now. I feel bad for 079B Haleakala, who has to share a pot with her.