NOIDs, mystery NOIDs, and mystery NOID babies

First, breaking news: pink More Lips NOID has aborted her seedpod. Apparent mistreatment saw the base of the peduncle rotten and nothing could be done. Experts suspect that confinement in poorly ventilated solitary quarantine cell is to blame. The pod is plump, but only a couple of months into development, and authorities strictly warn against hope for seed viability.

She's in full bloom though, and beautiful.

Her sparkling raspberry pink is gorgeous.

She's also now confirmed as infected--I'd have lifted her out of the solitary confinement cell for the photo, but then I saw the thrips larvae scooting on the bottom of the cell. Despite regular peeping, I haven't spied activity on flowers, buds, or new baby leaves. She'll get sprayed, of course, and will spend additional weeks in confinement (a large white drainless pot with DYI skylight lid). Luckily she seems to like it there just fine.

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Most of my AVs right now are good ole NOIDs¹. Here's something of a list:

- More Lips cultivar with plain single pink pansies that open a soft baby pink and mature into a deep raspberry. Currently breaking in full bloom.
- Ylitalo cultivar with frilled single white pansies with violet edges. Currently de-budded due to war against a straggling cell of guerilla thrips.
- Ylitalo cultivar with attractive full rosette. Total mystery. I don't think I've saved any photo of the thing in bloom and have no memory of her. She may be single white pansy with pink/lilac thumbprints but only time or archaeological findings will tell. Currently making tiny little buds.
- 3 babies of an Ylitalo single white star/pansy with heavy bloom, robust habit, and slightly lighter green leaves with white backs.

- 3 young plants of a local traditional single plain darkish violet pansy with plain leaves
- 2 nearly established suckers of the edged Ylitalo
- 1-2 babies of multiple different Absolute Mystery NOIDs

Most of those mystery babies come from leaves I had rooting this spring, and every single leaf has  produced profuse numbers of babies.² I just separated and potted three pots into six, and had to discard at least six more babies. Later dates will see me culling more.

Of course these leaves weren't mystery NOIDs originally -- I even had an archival system, of sorts, to identify leaf per parent plant. Well brain stuff happened and I've lost much of that archive. Coming up: baby AV batch 2.

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1. To be less than exact, I have 1 named adult, 3 NOID adults, 3 NOID youngsters, 11 NOID babies/leaves with babies, and 12 named cuttings rooting.  ^↩
2. I guess discarding tertiary babies is a fair toll for getting some experience and confidence in leaf propagation before my inevitable collapse³ into full-out AV fancy. ^↩
3. Inevitable, but not necessarily occurring in the near future. I've noticed that my taste is pretty different from what's in vogue in the AV world. Story of my life, eh. ^↩

Guerilla thrips

I've been having a little thrips situation going on (ok a thrips situation is never 'little' but it's not like bugs are easy to find here). I was right in the middle of attempting to self 'Humako Oriental' on her last remaining buds from purchase date, when I noticed that she had pollen sprinkled... and yes, I saw a thrips larva, right there at the top of the stigma, shamelessly munching on the pollen I had so painstakingly swabbed there. Luckily (?) HumOri is a dropper, so I could just pluck the bells off causing minimal stress, and spray the heck out of her without necessarily having to sacrifice the seedpod prospects.¹

I promptly quarantined HumOri to the bathroom, but new larvae kept appearing one by one so I dug deeper, and found their sanctuary... a new baby leaf, the size of a 5-cent coin, that was just beginning to crack open... a larva clubhouse! They had been hanging around in there during the spray and probably hadn't even left their fuzzy little spray raid shelter yet. Grrr. I plucked that leaf, and the next one I sprayed, holding it open with a pair of tweezers. And of course, a repeat spray all over the plant.

Then I debudded and sprayed the rest of my AVs and now they're quarantined in the bathroom save for two cases: the new babies, who have been planted in sprayed soil and sprayed themselves, but reside under cover in the kitchen, and my pink More Lips NOID who had JUST been breaking her first bud of what is going to be a most magnificent bloom! ² It's a big deal for me, because this is my first own AV and also the first time I managed to have a rebloom on anything. ³

Anyways, I'm on my way to continue spraying and quarantining the remaining plants in my living room. Thank goodness most of them have been living in the balcony for a good while! I'll also need to sterilize my moler and my softened coir and and my bag of houseplant soil which all have been the best places to ambush adult thrips. They probably haven't laid eggs there due to significant local lack of yummy AV pollen, but I want to be sure.

Pros:
- HumOri is the only plant to have shown a single thrips
- with multiple rooms, a few coverable trays, and now an all-new plant light rig, I have it pretty good for a proper quarantine
- I'm so dang nearsighted

Cons:
- pink More Lips NOID remains a high-value target for thrips and needs to stay under cover
- this isn't over yet

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1.  One of those proved failed yesterday and I have little hope for the other one--it looks a bit pale and skinny, but I'll let it hang around until I'm sure.^↩
2.  I.e. 5+ stalks, all with 3 buds at least, some with 6 or even 8. ^↩
3.  And my mother's indoor gardening habits certainly didn't give me any expectations of ever seeing more than one or two blossoms on an AV, if even that.^↩

AV babies are here!

Now that I see them together in person, I'm surprised that there are so many (semi) minis. Seems like standard fashion isn't much to my taste. I don't like huge blooms, and I have very limited preferences for doubles.

Here they are! My all-seven-sorts! These little guys come from http://www.fialki.de/shop, a German-Russian webshop based in Germany. They were here within a week after I pressed the button to order them, and were safely and carefully packaged in tiny ziploc bags and good labels. All leaves were in good condition, one or two with rather minor faults. As you can see, number 5 was sent with a back-up leaf and that I also received two leaves of a bonus sort (8)! Great communication from fialki.de, I can recommend them whole-heartedly.

ATTN: Following descriptions are not official and include my additions and alterations.

1. 'LE Aisedora'  — Semidouble white-pink-fuchsia with thumbprints and fantasy.  (Lebetskaya)

2. 'Wild Irish Rose'  — Semidouble pink pansy with wide green edge. Dark green pointed serrated leaves with white-tan-pink TL variegation and red back. #8568 (S. Sorano 1996)

3. 'Ozornye Volki' — Semidouble violet-blue wavy stars/streaked violet fantasy. Dark green, pointed. (Arkhipov)

4. 'Blue Tail Fly' — Semiminiature with single dark violet-blue folded wasps. Long petioles. Medium green bustle-back lollipop foliage.  (J. Dates)

5. 'Senk's Azalea Trail' — Miniature trailer with single to semidouble fuchsia wasps. Leaves dark green pointed longifolia with white and pink TL variegation and red back. #9845 (R. Follett/D. Senk 2008)

6. 'Shiawasee Trail'  — Trailer with double white and pale blue variable star with blue eye. Medium green diva foliage. #9023 (S. Sanders/R. Brenton 2001)

7. 'The Madam' — Trailer with single to semidouble pale pink bells with raspberry-rose tips. Leaves medium to dark green, quilted. #8755 (P. Harris 1998)

8. 'Dancin' Trail' —  Semiminiature trailer with double soft fuchsia stars. Leaves dark green and pointed with a red underside. (S. Sorano)

DIVA.