Anthurium ("Michelle" x "Zara") x aff besseae "Elvis"

(Michelle x Zara) x aff besseae "Elvis"

The seed parent is the inverse of the more widely traded of Dr. Block's earlier mass-releases, which tells you something about how these generic-era plants get sorted into keepers and cast-offs long after the fact. I found it off Krome Ave, summer 2023, tucked in among orchids and platycerium at a roadside nursery, still wearing the old 'Nurturing Nature' tag with the now-defunct QR code instead of today's colorized branding. A relic of the mid-COVID plant craze that turned out to be worth keeping. It owes its deep red-pink emergents and beautiful veination to Tim Anderson's 'Wonder Boy', the likely selfed-parent behind both the seed and pollen donors used to make it.

The pollen parent is aff besseae "Elvis" - blue, suede, and not really the King, but two out of three gets you a name that sticks in the memory, which is all I need when I've got more than one aff besseae on the bench. Some in the trade have floated it as 'sp. nov. Darien,' though no accession site has ever been shared publicly, so take that lineage with the appropriate grain of salt. Pretty plant regardless of what we end up calling it.