Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS FOR NOVICES & ADDICTS - NOVEMBER 2012, 0 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi to everyone on this nice wet Friday morning. We've had a nice shower over night and it's drizzling at present with more forecast for tomorrow, so that should freshen everything up and make all of the plants smile.

Breeindy – What Neo 'Amazing Grace' were you after, the light form or the dark form? I'm pretty sure I have a spare light form but no dark form as mine reverted back to a light form as they often do

Shirley – The big black snake was probably trying to get into your shade house among the bromeliads to have a “frog dinner”. I occasionally saw them around the fish pond in my orchid house at our old address and I always knew when they were around as everything was deadly silent and not a frog or a skink to be seen anywhere,. Even though I wasn't all that fond of seeing them in among the plants I couldn't help admire the sheer, shiny beauty of them.

Neo Medusa is grown by a few growers down here and we've all found the same thing about it, it seems to attract that soft white scale and Mealy Bug that sometimes bothers some particular plants more than others, so just keep an eye on it.

Unfortunately the Neo Guinea x self isn't mine, nor is the pic, but I did repeat the selfing in the hope of getting something similar but none of mine turned out that light in colour. I still like the original species though and when grown in good light (like you get up north) it can get a lot of yellowish colouring and it is a particularly fast grower and a good basket specimen and well worth growing. I had a nice plant that a bloke took a liking to and wanted to buy it right or wrong so I sold it to him as I have plenty, it had been hanging right up beneath the shade cloth and was quite yellowish in colour. I'll have to hang one of the others up high now and try and colour that up also.

You mentioned Neo 'Hurricane Alley' to Bree, and I think I saw it on Ebay again a couple of days ago when I was just browsing to see what's around. Your Neo. Marmorata looks very similar to the one I have. I have one plant growing in an old tree fern stump and another in a pot in almost full sun which has turned the green to a washed out yellowish colour caused by a bit too much sun bleaching.

Ian – That's a nice collection of Neophytums you have there and I especially like the 'Vagans' with its beautiful contrasting colours and unusual growth habit.

I'll finish up today and Pic 1 which is the same plant I posted yesterday show the uniqueness of the flowers. These plants are of the helonicoides or “Watch Spring” group of Billbergias, so named because of the coiled petals which resemble a watch spring. These are easier seen in the close-up of the same flowers in Pic 2 . Pic 3 is a bit blurry (and I hadn't even had a drink) and is a pic of a first flowering of a seedling Canistropsis seidellii x Canistropsis 'Plum' and Pic's 4 is the “before” and Pic 5 is the “after” of a make over of a corner of one of my brom gardens.

All the best, Nev.