Anthurium [(crystallinum x magnificum) x aff besseae "Big Bess"] x ('Red Velvet Cake' x 'Zara')

((crystallinum x magnificum) x aff besseae "Big Bess") x (Red Velvet Cake x Zara)

I don't have much to say about the seed parent, and I'm not going to make something up just to fill space - it is what the tag says it is, nothing more, nothing less. The pollen parent, though, I can talk about. "Red Velvet Cake" x "Zara" is a plant I paid too much for at the IAS Show & Sale, September 2023, off the Doctor Jeffrey Block table. It sulked as a runt for a full year, the kind of runt that makes you question your choices, and then it took off after some babying I'd rather not itemize. Now it's a proper mother plant, throwing emergent leaves that shift from soft pink-brown to something closer to an arterial-wound red depending on the temperature and light it's getting that week. It's already made its way into a few other hybrids floating around the greenhouse, and now it's in this one too.