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

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – Well that’s another weekend over and another week closer to Christmas; gee it’ll soon be New Year.

Jean – Gee you’re really getting stuck into your garden; what you’ve accomplished in such a short time makes me feel very, very guilty. I watched a show on TV a while back and these yuppie chefs were making salads and putting in Nasturtium leaves and garnishing them with the flowers, they reckon the leaves taste a bit like Rocket; have you ever tried eating them?

Jean the variegated Bill. nutans does sometimes show a few pale coloured spots as well as the variegation, and when the light’s just right, it gets a pink flush through the leaves as well, quite the under rated little Bill.

I’m glad you have a nice recurvata var. benrathii, they are a nice little brom's and often burst out in flower when you least expect it. I just noticed today, a little hybrid I made several years ago from a cross of Ae. recurvata x Ae. caudata. It’s in flower and the flowers are yellow, so that’s an unexpected surprise.

Neo’s ‘Noble Descent’ and ‘Lila’ have both been around for a while, but as they say “oldies but still goodies” and as I wrote yesterday, ‘Noble Descent’ is a good tough plant for sunny locations and in my opinion it's one that should be in all collections.

Brian – You have two important jobs to do; firstly, introduce your two new neighbours to bromeliads and then introduce them to us and join them up to this site.

Neo. ‘Riens Pride’ is a lovely compact little plant which was bred in 1991 from a crossing of Neo.’Fairy Paint’ x ‘Fairy Paint’. It’s main attraction are the red leaf-tips which really “glow” and almost become iridescent during flowering (at anthesis).

I think the name on your Vriesea is more likely to be Vr. Milky Way x Vr. Erotica as these are two separate plants. You can’t register a plant with a formula name as it defeats the purpose of the BCR. I’ll post a pic of each as well as a pic of the Erotica flower and it will be interesting to see the comparison between it and yours when it flowers.

Neo.’Groucho’ is another of Costa Rica’s Chester Skotak’s hybrids, and like many he’s recently made using the parent (carolinae variegated x ‘Hannibal Lector’), it has that unusual combination of colours. I’ve never seen a picture of the actual (carolinae variegated x ‘Hannibal Lector’) parent he uses, but as Neo.’Hannibal Lector’ has horizontal banding and the carolinae is variegated, it’s possible it has this unusual combination of colours as well and is passing them on to its progeny; well that’s my theory anyway.

He has bred 21 others using this same parent. A few of these are ‘Aftershock’, ‘Amigo’, ‘Banshee’, Blushing zebra’ and others which all have similar colouring and supports what I’m thinking also. If you type (carolinae variegated x Hannibal Lector) into the search engine of the BCR and highlight the button marked “Parents” you can view all 22 of them.

The plant xNeophytum 'Ralph Davis' is a bi-generic cross between Orthophytum navioides and Neoregelia 'Meyendorffii', but it doesn’t end there because it produced a beautiful variegated sport which was later registered as the famous and popular xNeophytum ‘Galactic Warrior’. (See Pic.5)

Till. Tectorum is certainly an eye catching plant and when it gets a bit of age and grows as large as the one which won grand champion at our recent show, it’s quite “spectacular”.

Finally, I think your last plant is Neo. ‘Pemiento’, I don’t seem to have a picture on file so I’ll take one today and post it tomorrow for comparison.

Once again, you have a good variety of different plants in your pictures, and thanks for sharing with us and keep them coming.

I’ll finish with a few pic’s of plants I’ve spoken about above; Pic.1 is one of my Neo.‘Noble Descent’ plants for comparison, Pic.2 is Jack Koning’s Vr. Milky Way, Pic.3 is Vr. ‘Erotica’, Pic.4 is a flower from Vr. ‘Erotica’ and finally Pic. 5 is xNeophytum ‘Galactic Warrior’.

All the best, Nev.