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!
2 Hello, 1980s makeup!
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3 comments:
Pure Energy struck me as a Star Trek reference as it was used by Spock in one of the episodes of the original series. Color-wise would have been quire workable as there were different energy weapons and energy entities.
Paul:
It's actually a Star Trek reference the way I was thinking of it too, though in sort of a roundabout way.
On a Star Trek note, just thought of another possible name for a red flower ... either Schlum or anthurium.... "Red Shirt". heh. (Or a variation with a more upbeat spin thereof like Red Shirt's Heyday", "Red Shirt's Survival", ....)
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