u/ElkLongjumping7870

In bloom today: Rhapsodie Clementine, one of my favorites. Bought it at the Ohio State African Violet Society show & sale a couple of weeks ago, in full bloom, and not a single flower has faded.

My phone camera didn't do a very good job of capturing the color - it's a lighter, periwinkle blue. (For the nerds among you, one of its parents was Granger's Wonderland, hybridized by Dale Eyerdom of Granger Gardens in Medina, Ohio. They went out of business probably 25 years ago, but lots of their hybrids are still grown and appreciated.)

African Violet Society of America is holding a free webinar at 3:00 pm Central time zone, next Sunday, 9/13, by Olive Ma of the Violet Barn. It's only available to AVSA members, unfortunately.- but if you were considering joining, this is a great incentive.

https://africanvioletsocietyofamerica.org/virtual-violet-connection/

Going through my AV photos to respond to a post yesterday I ran across this one, which makes me mad at Past Me because I should have gotten a shot that included the tag with the name of the grower, so I could ask them for a leaf of this.

Saintpaulia* velutina is one of the species and I've never been able to keep one alive. Its leaves are much thinner than most AVs, so you have to keep a close eye on it so it doesn't dry out. Where the ones most of us grow are slightly succulent and won't immediately crash if the rootball gets dry, velutina doesn't have that reserve.

* Yes, I know the taxonomists have run roughshod through the gesneriads and lumped a bunch of things under "streptocarpus", including African violets, but it was a stupid decision and I've elected to ignore it.

Spinning off the previous conversation about trailing AVs -- some photos I saved from an old blog that show how huge trailers can grow. Most of these appear to be semi-mini or mini trailers (size classifications for trailers are based on leaf size, rather than the diameter the plant can be expected to grow, like they do with standard, single-crown violets), although I think there's one standard trailer in there.

https://violettigerviolets.blogspot.com/

There are also some good articles on the blog if anyone is looking for cultural information.

The third picture is of a trailer grown using the "Japanese method" I mentioned . That saucer it's growing in is probably 10" across.

This is probably my all-time favorite variety. Registered in 1988 by hybridizer Michel Tremblay.

Young plant, kind of a mess right now but it will be beautiful in a few months.

Rainbow's Quiet Riot - an oldie but a goodie. It needs to be potted up and I should really strip all those blossoms off so it puts its energy into growing larger, but I just couldn't resist letting it bloom its heart out just once. (Between the artificial light and my phone camera, that's not really an accurate rendering of the color: it's a deep violet-blue, but not THAT blue.)