The cutting arrives in a padded envelope from a seller in Medellín, labeled Anthurium warocqueanum × papillilaminum, F2. The leaf is maybe eight centimeters long, heart-shaped, the surface a matte charcoal-green that absorbs light rather than reflecting it. The veins are silver-white, slightly impressed. It looks, at this juvenile stage, like a dozen other things you've grown or seen in photos. You put it in a terracotta pot with a mix of orchid bark, perlite, and long-fiber sphagnum. You wait.
Six months later the leaves are twenty-five centimeters and the velvet pile has deepened to something close to black in low light. Someone in a forum asks what it is. You type the name from the label, then pause before posting. Because if you've been doing this long enough, you already know: the name might be exactly right, or it might mean almost nothing at all.