carlablackiae "Tropicarla" x magnificum "Norte"

carlablackiae "Tropicarla" x magnificum "Norte"

Tropicarla is, and I say this with love, probably my best name yet. I bought the seed parent off an Ecuadorian nursery at the tail end of a plant show, sold to me as seed grown, which it was not - divided at the stem, plain as day once I got it home and looked properly. Not enough there to call it wild collected either, so I hold my suspicions and my tongue. I keep several flowering-size A. carlablackiae in the greenhouse and try to tell them apart when I can, and this one got its name off a Rays broadcast, the announcer nodding to Tropicana Field one too many times while I was standing there among the plants. Eureka. Tropicarla.

The pollen parent, "Norte," came to me from Scott Cohen as a seed grown baby, and it's a slightly different read on magnificum than some other ecotypes I grow - forking near the margin rather than boxed in by a perimeter vein, for anyone who wants to argue subspecies with me. Its inflorescence smells like menthol and moth balls, which either means something to you or it doesn't. This cross puts a name I'm proud of onto a plant I already respect. Enjoy the results, they're a more intelligible statement than I am.