Monday, March 23, 2015

Anthurium no. 0088 "Charlotte F. Babylon"

You may remember Charlotte from last spring, when she grew a bud and then dropped it after working on it for three months. At the beginning of February 2015, I noticed a new bud, and that one developed a lot faster, opening its spathe about a month later.


There's not a lot to say about this; we've seen red / yellow blooms before. I like it fine, but mostly I think that's because I'm happy it's not a pink / pink. Even if it isn't exactly breaking new ground in Anthurium bloom color, it's pretty large, and seems to be holding its own against the thrips pretty well, which is enough to make me happy.


The leaves are pretty much the same story: not groundbreaking, better than the default, good enough.


Is Charlotte a keeper? I'm not sure yet. I certainly have a lot of choices, when it comes to the red / yellows,1 and I've already moved four of those2 up to 6-inch pots,3 so I certainly don't have to keep her around, but the red / yellows also tend to age better -- a lot of the pink / pinks get lighter over time, whereas the red / yellows tend to stay more or less the same color -- so I'm at least tempted to keep her around. We'll see.

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1 (0034 "Alaska Thunderfuck," 0058 "Betty Larsony," 0059 "Bijoux Tuit," 0063 "Audrey Quest," 0076 "Bob Humbug," 0088 "Charlotte F. Babylon," 0125 "Anya Wei," 0179 "Katie Boundary," 0223 "Patty Cake," 0245 "Sawyer Ad," 0257 "Summer Bederth-Enuthers," 0280 "Jujubee," and 0282 "Dave Trading.")
2 (0059 "Bijoux Tuit," 0076 "Bob Humbug," 0245 "Sawyer Ad," 0282 "Dave Trading")
3 Getting moved to a 6-inch pot is more or less my way of saying to a seedling, good job, you get to stay. At the moment, there are only 29 named seedlings in 6-inch pots, and unless / until I can sell some more of my non-Anthuriums, I only have room for one or two more, so competition is pretty intense. If 0330 "Faye Quinette," the one with the brown bud, winds up looking at all pleasant, she's probably going to get a 6-inch pot, but there aren't any other seedlings that are obviously in the lead, and I don't know how much longer Faye is going to take. It seems like she's been working on this one bloom forever. (In reality, it's only been since late January, not even two months yet.)


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

On my monitor, the photos of Charlotte appear very dark pink rather than red. You've certainly posted others that looked fire engine red. Am I just seeing things?

Texas Anon

mr_subjunctive said...

Texas Anon:

Well, it's pretty straightforwardly red in person. It's possible that some / all of the discrepancy is because the first photo is partly backlit, and usually they aren't. (It's a pain to try to photograph Anthurium blooms with my camera, because they're so shiny that from most angles all I get are reflections. Back-lighting helps with that, but then I wind up with colors that are a little off. I've noticed this more with the pink / pinks than with the reds, but I suppose it could be happening here too.)