Sunday, September 13, 2015

Anthurium no. 0416 "Holy McGrail"

Holy McGrail is an actual performer, though not a drag queen: she's a "faux queen;" i.e. a biological woman who takes on the general performance style of drag queens. Which is a whole scene unto itself, apparently, though my understanding is that there's a fair amount of drag queen / faux queen cross-pollination.

I no longer remember whether I knew Holy was a faux queen when I added her name to the list, but I've never been super rigid about categorizing, when it comes to the name list, because the borders between different categories (drag king, drag queen, female impersonator, transvestite, faux queen, genderqueer, genderfuck, trans man, trans woman, etc.) are all pretty fuzzy, and people identify in different ways at different points in their lives (sometimes), and so I've mostly just decided that if a performer is anywhere near this general cluster of labels then I'm adding them to the list. And faux queens are close enough. But it all gets really complicated, and I figure I'm bound to offend someone sooner or later, as not all of these groups like one another or necessarily want to be associated with the others (the border between "drag queen" and "trans woman" is sort of particularly fraught lately). So if you've got a problem with faux queens being included, or really anything else about the seedling names, um, I guess e-mail me about it or something.

In Holy's particular case, I think the question is ultimately moot. Because this is an ugly bloom:


With ugly leaves:


I'd have a tough time coming up with anything nice to say about the plant at all, frankly:


So probably the plant's going in the trash soon, and the name will wind up recycled for another seedling down the line somewhere.1 I'm waiting to see whether the second bloom, currently pretty close to opening, will wind up being any better: if it is, then I might wind up hanging on to Holy a little longer. She could turn it all around and be awesome. In theory. I guess. But don't get attached.

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1 This happens all the time. The next "Dawn Kekong" will be the fifth seedling saddled with that name. (#s 0102, 0315, 0664, and 1054 are all deceased; if I bother trying it again, the next Dawn Kekong should fall somewhere in the 1700s.)


2 comments:

Nick said...

You've mentioned having thrips, Have you tested these for Tomato spotted wilt virus or Impatiens necrotic spot virus? Those marks on the leaves look like viral symptoms.

mr_subjunctive said...

Nick:

Well, I've looked into it (not for those specific viruses, but viruses sort of generally), and the only place I could find that even would test my plants for the virus I thought most likely to be the problem (dasheen mosaic virus) is prohibitively expensive.