You are very kind, John. My photography still needs improvement but I am trying. The more spot on I can get the photos using the camera, the less post production I need to waste time on in Photoshop later, other than resizing and adding a signature. Saves me a lot of time if I don't have to fiddle with lighting, contrast, or color adjustments. These were spot on and needed almost no editing so I'm very happy about that. Some of my past editing attempts on other flowers even a year ago were off color, over saturated, etc. I've been going back and trying to redo some of those and still playing with the white balance, light metering, tripod, ISO vs depth of field and graininess, etc.

Yes, you will love this hybrid. Just be sure to repot it often, about once every 3 or 4 months. Otherwise it may stall in blooming. That's pretty true of most gesneraids as far as I have seen. Keep bumping it up slightly in pot size when the plant size warrants it and it will form a lovely rosette with the leaves and flowers. I'm still working on bumping mine up fast enough. Not there yet.

Terri Vicenzi is my role model for getting fabulous streps. Here's a photo of her Black Tie Affair in bloom which is a roughly the same size as my Little Kan at around 10 to 12 inches.

Remember, you can also trim back strep leaves which /also/ encourages more leaves to grow in. So if you really don't want your plant to reach 12 inches wide (or more) you could cut the leaves and round them off. Terri didn't do that here but she could have forced it to be 1/3 to 1/2 smaller in diameter if she needed to for reasons of space. Some of my streps can easily produce SINGLE leaves of 20 inches or more! So you can bet your patootie that I trim those leaves well back.

If you ever have a young plant that only makes one leaf and then wants to flower rather than making more leaves, be SURE to cut that leaf in half (or at least 1/3 off) and remove all of the flower buds. You can wait and let the first flower open but a lot of streps have monofoliate monocarpic species in their genetics which can trigger them to make only one leaf and then bloom themselves to death. Cutting that first leaf and removing flower buds then encourages the baby strep to make more leaves and grow stronger before flowering and thus less likely to trigger the death cycle.

Little Kan is a fabulous strep! Thanks for showing us this beauty and congratulations on your win. Terri's plant is gorgeous too as are all of hers!

I stayed over at Terri's house recently when I was traveling up north. She and I also shared a hotel room at the Dixie AVSA Convention of March 2016 in Atlanta. She does indeed grow some very impressive and healthy streps. When I was new to growing them only a couple of years ago, I picked her brains (and Dale Martens) and still do occasionally. I also almost gave up on streps after my first summer growing them because I got mites so bad it wiped out a lot of my plants. In all my 40+ years of growing I'd never run into a mite infestation like that! She kept sending me more leaves to try and encouraging me. She's been a great friend and I owe her and Dale so much gratitude for all their help.

Yes, Terri is most generous. She is the leader of our AV & Gesneriad club and I have had the privilege of visiting her home and seeing all her lovely plants on more than one occasion.

Darn, I wish I could have timed my visit to coincide with one of your meetings. Maybe I can next time I can make it up that way.

Love it!!! I want one. I wish I could find more miniature Streps. :D

I am trying to hybridize some even now. Mine are sold out else I'd point you to my Heartland's Baby Egrets leaf pot but it's gone. If you go and look at the Violet Barn they have a section for mini streps with usually two or three choices, mostly whites. But I haven't looked at it lately.

Considering the coloration, "Black Tie Affair" should have been named "Purple Tie Affair." (Little bit of color accurate whimsy combined with formal decorum. ;-D )

I just came across one of these at my local nursery. Any tips on how to take care of one would be wonderful. It was in a greenhouse and I live in a more arid area in CA. Should I mist or do the leaves brown when they come in contact with water?

I believe I've read that misting is totally a wasted effort on any plant.

Streps prefer being cool (versus your likely weather) and shouldn't be above 80F. It's definitely an indoor plant in the AC type.

Being so common, there's plenty of growing instructions to be found by searching GW or googling.

Definitely not going outside here. AC set at 75 so hoping it will do ok. Thanks.

There's a ton of information about growing these if you do a Google search. There are also VERY helpful Facebook groups where people like Dale Martins (and others) will gladly help as well. I learned a ton from them myself. Streps tend to like very bright light (but not full sun), cool as mentioned (in the 65 to 80 degree range being ieal) but NOT wet. Make sure the crowns are planted high so new leaves emerging do not contact the soil, and let the soil dry out a bit between watering. Adding a lot of perlite or other fast draining media to open up and add lots of air pockets to your potting mix is a good idea, especially if you wick water as I do (self watering). Easy to start from leaf cuttings that are still fresh and not too old.