When I go to a trade show, I always look forward to going to the Optimara booth and seeing all the African violets. Today at the TPIE show in Fort Lauderdale, they were introducing their new series called the LooXo (“looks so”) violets and the one displayed was LooXo ‘Gorgeous’.

New Violet

What is new about it you ask. Look close and you will see there are no yellow pollen sacs. It is called the ‘Filantherless’ violet series. It is touted to be a profuse bloomer, having high thrips resistance, and low botrytis susceptibility.

LooXo ‘Gorgeous’

Good bye thrips

As you can see below, all violets have those yellow pollen sacs that thrips love. These new violets do not have those sacs.

Another Optimara with the pollen sacs as normal

Do you like the look?

I kind of like the looks of the yellow sacs and the new LooXo will take some getting used to. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

A whole container of LooXo ‘gorgeous’

LooXo sign