Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS IN SUMMER ..2014, 2 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone; I say everyone even though it looks like just Teresa and I this morning, have the rest of you slept in?

Although Shirley and hubby are probably getting an early start raking up leaves and debris from the horrendous storm that hit the Brisbane area yesterday, so bad in fact that they’ve called in the army to help with the clean-up.

Do we have any members in the Brisbane area that really copped the destructive rain, hail, and winds that caused so much damage? Estimates are it will cost $150 million to repair

See: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-28/brisbane-storms-68000-...

Teresa - Although Ae orlandiana is a species, it is quite variable and comes in a myriad of colours. Some of the better ones have been registered as select cultivated varieties and given a name to distinguish them from the species. Ae. ‘Snowflakes’ and Ae. ‘Black Beauty’ are but two of these.

Besides these there are many more which growers have given their own “pet names” to without going to the trouble of registering them. The plants I posted yesterday are two such plants which have a “pet name” added to the correct Ae. orlandiana name, I didn’t name them, that was the name on them when I bought them, but for convenience sake, I leave that name on them for ease of identification, because as some orlandiana pups mature, they go through many colour and pattern changes which would otherwise make them impossible to identify. As well as these many different forms, there is also the beautiful variegated albo-marginated Ae. ‘Ensign’ as well as a reverse form with green leaf margins instead of white.

A few years back I had seven different forms all unregistered but all carrying the “pet names” I bought them under. Unfortunately Bower Birds stole all of the plastic name tags out of the pots and left me with the dilemma of seven different orlandiana NOIDS and which only just recently I’ve been able to once again correctly identify. I now make my name tags out of old aluminium venetian blind slats which the Bower Birds don’t like and fortunately I can avoid a repeat performance of name tag stealing.

Just as another warning about tennis balls and dogs, to make matters even worse, some $2 shops and pet shops are selling cheap, poor quality, tennis balls (made in China) in which after a short time, the rubber (or plastic substitute) goes hard and brittle and inclined to make the broken pieces available for swallowing even sooner than normal.

I’ll just finish today with pic’s of a few different Ae. orlandianas. I. is 'Dark Knight', 2. is 'Majestic', 3. is 'Dark One', 4. is 'Ensign' and 5. is. 'Rainbow'. All except the 'Ensign' are unregistered "pet names"

All the best, Nev