Anthurium magnificum "Mickey" x carlablackiae "Tropicarla"

magnificum "Mickey" x carlablackiae "Tropicarla"

The seed parent alone could carry a blurb twice this length, so I'll keep myself honest. This is a clone of a plant likely wild-harvested some 80 years ago, grown for years in the foyer of a Miami orchid nursery by Mickey Carmichael herself. Enid Offolter saw it about 20 years back, when the plant was already thought to be pushing 60, and left with a cutting. Enid eventually donated a piece of her own enormous clone to the International Aroid Society's Annual Member Dinner and Auction, where I got into a bidding war over it and, thankfully, came out on top. A. magnificum is suspected to be a complex of 20 or more subspecies or ecotypes, and there are others floating around trade under names like "Norte" or "Silver." I'm partial to this one.

The pollen parent has a sillier origin story. I bought it off an Ecuadorian nursery at the tail end of a plant show, sold to me as seed grown. It was not, as became obvious once I got it home and found it divided at the stem. Not enough there to call it wild-collected, but I remain a little suspicious. I keep several flowering-size carlablackiae in the greenhouse and try to tell them apart when I can, and this one got its name off a baseball broadcast, of all things, when the announcer mentioned Tropicana Field one too many times and something clicked. Tropicarla. Possibly my best naming work to date.

Whatever comes of crossing these two, it inherits a decent bit of history on both sides.