Australian and New Zealand Gardening: Bromeliads For Novices and Addicts - October 2014, 3 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – Where has spring gone? All night long we’ve had gale force winds and freezing cold sleety rain, in fact the wind’s so strong; it would blow a dog of a chain!

No gardening today, and it’s just as well I bought a heap of Neo’s into the garage yesterday to be re-potted.

Teresa – Gee things are finally looking up for you on the brom front. Firstly you’ve tracked down Seasol and now you’ve found the elusive variegated Bill nutans you’ve been after.

You’d better make it clear to hubby though that it is a “belated birthday present” and not a “combined birthday and Christmas present”. Also congratulations on your four flower spikes on Bill. nutans, you must be doing something right.

Trish – Thanks so much for tracking down the correct ID for my mini previously known as Neo. ‘Auroa’. I had suspected that for some time but as no one else down here has it I had no way of checking. Thanks for passing on a big “thank you” to your friend from me also.

As for the Desert Roses, I’m pleased to say it isn’t just me who has difficulty growing them. I have a friend who is a member of the local Garden Club, and she told me the topic for last month’s meeting was “Desert Roses”. It seems that everyone in this area has the same problem except one lady who takes her plants inside during the cold weather.

I made myself a rule when I started with brom’s, and that was, if they had to be brought inside during the cold weather, then I wouldn’t bother growing them, and the same applies to Desert Roses as well. I guess I’ll just have to admire them from the pictures.

Your remark about using Neo. ‘Royal Cordovan’ as a breeding parent made me realize that it’s a plant I’ve never used nor have I heard of any of the other local breeders using it. This prompted me to check the BCR to see what was recorded about it as a parent and it has thirty hybrids registered against its name, so people other than you have recognized its potential as a parent also. To see some of the beautiful results from it as a parent, go to: http://registry.bsi.org/index.php?fields=Parents&id=2841&sea...
There’s a very interesting cross that was made in Thailand by crossing it with a very unlikely candidate, Neo.’Hannibal Lector’ and producing an attractive hybrid called Neo.‘Heart of Siam’.

Also, I’m quite impressed you even remember the other one; we’ll make a breeder out of you yet. Now is the time to start hybridising while you’re young you know, don’t wait until you’re an old fart like me as you’ll regret it as I have. I know Tash took my advice and is collecting some great plants which will make wonderful breeding stock.

I think Ae recurvata is an amazing little plant which seems almost “bullet proof” as it has withstood heatwaves and freezing cold winters here, out in the open with no protection whatsoever. It’s only when I‘m weeding around them in the garden and I’m continually getting “pricked” that I threaten to get rid of them, but then the time comes when the leaves start to colour up again and they get a reprieve. The one you liked the best is one of my seedlings and my favourite also as it’s not as large as many of the others and just about 6” high, hence the name pending registration of ‘Little Surprise’.

Yes I do have you down for a bit of the variegated nutans. I dug a heap of it out of the garden during my tidy up as it does become quite rampant. It was very overcrowded and consequently very leggy due to growing toward more the light. I planted a few pots and I cut the leaves right back to where they should be in the hope of producing pups more quickly, but the weather has been so unsettled until now and hopefully when it stabilizes, things will start to move and I’ll send you a bit.

Trish, if you have a local brom society in town I would strongly advise you to join it as you will learn much more there from other growers than you will from all of the books you can read, but more importantly you will learn about growing them in your own local area. If it’s anything like our society there are also opportunities to buy plants at reasonable prices as well as pots, name tags and other requisites. Usually they have a guest speaker each month as well as a mini-show (popular vote) where members often bring in various types of different genera.

I don’t know of Vr. 'Altodaserrae' (Pic.1) and don’t seem to be able to find it anywhere, do you know anything about its history or what sort of flower it has?

The mini’s look like nice little plants but Joe’s Paph. gets my vote, it’s a beauty. Tell me, did you post those pic’s from a PC or a laptop? I’m just trying to establish why one is sideways.

Diane – As you get into bromeliads, you will, learn the importance of keeping accurate names where ever possible. However some of these names are quite long and to save a bit of space on the name tags, the genera name is often abbreviated; in the case of the plants I posted yesterday Ae. is the abbreviation for Aechmea..

Here are some examples of some of the more commonly grown genera and their name abbreviations;
Aechmea = Ae., Neoregelia = Neo., Nidularium = Nid., Tillandsia = Till., Vriesea = Vr., Guzmania = Guz., Billbergia = Bill.

Regarding losing posts before you post them on D.G., this happens on and off from time to time and what some of us do now is type our message on Microsoft Word first, and then just cut and paste it to D.G., that way if D.G. “eats it” you still have the original and don’t have to re-type it.

You say, “I have so much to learn about Brom’s I almost don't know where to start”, and in answer to this I would say that like everything, the best place to start is at the “beginning”. There is an enormous amount to understand about the different types of bromeliads but fortunately you only need to initially know the “tip of the ice berg”; in other words, about the few different genera that we commonly grow. As your collection and knowledge grows you will learn more, but you only need to learn as much as you are comfortable with, unless of course your objective is to become a taxonomist.

I don’t want to frighten you off bromeliads with the following information, this is just there as an “optional extra” if you like, and something you may or may not wish to refer to sometime in the future.

To give an idea of the size range, the largest bromeliad is Puya raimondii, which reaches 3–4 m tall in vegetative growth with a flower spike 9–10 m tall, and the smallest is the tiny Tillandsia usneoides (Spanish moss.) with many more in between.

Below is the bromeliad family and a list of the three bromeliad sub-families; as your collection grows, you my like to see which family each of your particular plants belongs to or you may be like many other growers and just be content with enjoying them without checking their origons, it’s entirely up to you.

Collectively bromeliads come from one main family known as BROMELIACEAE. This comprises a total of over 50 genera and 3,000 species.

This main family is broken down into three sub-families BROMELIOIDEAE, PITCAIRNIOIDEAE, and TILLANDSOIODEAE and listed below are the genera which fit within each of these families.

BROMELIOIDEAE: (32 genera, 861 species)
Acanthostachys, Aechmea , Ananas, Androlepis, Araeococcus , Billbergia , Bromelia , Canistropsis , Canistrum, Cryptanthus, Deinacanthon , Disteganthus, Edmundoa, Eduandrea , Fascicularia, Fernseea , Greigia , Hohenbergia, Hohenbergiopsis, Lymania , Neoglaziovia , Neoregelia , Nidularium , Ochagavia , Orthophytum , Portea , Pseudaechmea , Pseudananas , Quesnelia , Ronnbergia , Ursulaea , Wittrockia , Hybrids, Colour Variants

PITCAIRNIOIDEAE: (16 genera, 1030 species)
Brewcaria , Brocchinia , Connellia , Cottendorfia , Deuterocohnia , Dyckia , Encholirium , Fosterella, Hechtia, Lindmania, Navia, Pepinia, Pitcairnia, Puya , Sequencia , Steyerbromelia, Hybrids, Colour Variants.

TILLANDSOIODEAE: (9 genera, 1277 species)
Alcantarea , Catopsis , Glomeropitcairnia , Guzmania , Mezobromelia, Racinaea, Tillandsia , Vriesea , Werauhia , Hybrids, Colour Variants.

So by now you’re probably totally confused, I know I would be, but as I said it’s just information which you may at some time like to refer to, it isn’t compulsory.

Shirley – There’s no hurry sending me any pups in return, I have plenty of re-potting to keep me going. As you say, best to wait until they have a few roots when sending to cooler areas whereas it’s OK to send them rootless to warmer climates as they quickly grow roots at this time of the year.

I’m sorry about the name puzzle with the plants you bought at the show. Some of the brom societies brought in a rule that you couldn’t sell unnamed plants (NOIDS) at their shows. This was aimed at preventing more NOIDS from entering collections, however there are unscrupulous growers who get around this by just putting any name at all on the plants just to make a buck, and this causes an even bigger problem.

What we do in our society when selling plants which are NOIDS, we sell them with the name of the genera and the addition of (Varietal name unknown); e.g. Neoregelia (Varietal name unknown). That way the purchaser isn’t deceived and they know exactly what they are getting. The only other way around this is what is advocated by very staunch growers and that is that all NOIDS should be destroyed and that will never happen either. Have they not heard of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”?

Shirley, when you can’t find a plant on the BCR you can sometimes find it in the FCBS Photo Index as it doesn’t have to be registered to put it on there. Also if you can’t find it on the BCR and you know the name of the hybridiser you can sometimes find it with an advanced search. I remember once saying on one of the forums that Allan Freeman had 500 hybrids registered on the BCR and Geoff Lawn (the registrar) told me there was more than that and to access them all I needed to go to “Advanced Search”, type in the genus, the breeders name and highlight the “maximum” box at the bottom which I did, and “hey presto” there was a list of 957 registered Freeman hybrids on the list.

The difference in appearance between your ‘Beachcomber’ and the one in the pic. on the BCR could just be a climate thing where the colour changes occasionally. I would wait until next time a pup matures and maybe it will look similar; of course if the change was in the plant in the picture, I guess you’ll never know. Remember the Pic’s on the BCR often differ to the plants we have in our collection as it depends on the stage of maturity of the plant when the picture was taken.

They’re all nice plants in your pic’s today but the Neo ‘Africa’ is head and shoulders above the rest and gets my vote; what amazing shape.

I apologize to you all as I seem to have got carried away a bit with this post and gone very much overboard……blame it on the crook weather.

Just a few random pic’s today to finish with, and I’ll see you all again tomorrow.

All the best, Nev.