Australian and New Zealand Gardening: Bromeliads For Novices and Addicts - October 2014, 4 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – What a weird day yesterday; we had four seasons in one day and it finished late in the afternoon with a weather warning that gale force winds were lashing Sydney and to batten down the hatches as it was heading down the coast. Well we battened down the hatches but nothing happened, so I guess we got a reprieve. Today’s looking much better, fine and sunny with no wind, so fingers crossed.

Jean – It’s so good to hear from you with your regular progress reports and as I said previously, the progress you’re making is making me feel very guilty.

It will be great if you have a buyer for your extra brom’s, unfortunately when you are selling under these circumstances the buyers try and get them as cheaply as they can. We know you never get back what you pay for them unless they are something rare, but then what’s best, selling them for less than they’re worth or letting them die.

A friend of mine who passed away recently had a backyard full of brom’s which due to ill health had been badly neglected over the previous 12 months. His wife asked if I could come up and advise her what she could do as she only wanted to keep a few for herself and sell the rest.

After looking them over I saw there were some really good quality plants which had unfortunately due to neglect and excessive sun last summer looked pretty crook and purchasers would really only be buying the new pups on basically dead mother plants. There were also probably 50% of them which were NOIDS as well.

She was desperate to get rid of the excess and said if she couldn’t sell them they were going to the tip as it saddened her so much to see how they had deteriorated. I told her that under those circumstances if I were in her situation I would sell the large ones for $10 and the smaller ones for $5 no matter what they were. She thought about it for a while and decided that’s what she would do. She made it known at the brom club that she was selling them and one bloke bought $350 worth which made her quite happy as you couldn’t even see where they had been taken from, but there’s still the majority left because as soon as other people see the state of the mother plants they shy away and don’t look past them at the healthy new pups pushing up. The bloke who bought the big batch knew what to look for and got many bargains, unfortunately that wasn’t the case with others. The plants are still there and if anyone wanted some good bargains and comes to this area let me know and I’ll contact the lady for you to visit.

I guess the moral of the story is, don’t wait until the plants are looking crook and dying before you try to sell them or you’ll be stuck with them.

That plant in your pictures especially the first one, looks like a twin to my plant and that’s Neo. ‘Wurthmann’s Midnight’ and I feel you can confidently change you name tag to that.

Teresa – Yes there’s been some wonderful brom hybrids bred over the years and they just seem to get better and better which makes me wonder where it will all end. There are several Vriesea hybridists in NSW, Qld and N.Z now producing marvelous plants but I think Jack and a couple of others were the “trail blazers” and their experience is showing in the hybrids they are making as they seem to now have captured the shape combined with colour.

Neo ‘Delicate Delight’ is a beautiful plant and was bred by Allan Freeman a well know Qld. hybridist with 957 registered hybrids to his name.

Congratulation to Miss Sugar for the dog show, you can’t call her Weasel now.

That’s it for this morning and I’ll finish with some pic’s of new hybrids from Peter Coyle of N.Z. Pic 1 is a very unusual Vriesea hybrid; I initially dismissed it as “nothing much” until I looked closer and saw the amazing colours including subtle variegation. Pic.2 is Neo.’Tiger’ x ‘Apricot Nectar’, Pic.3 is Neo. Spotted Devil’ x ‘Skotak’s Tiger’, Pic.4 is Neo.’(‘Avalon x ‘Fireball’) x ‘Felix’ and Pic.5 is Neo.’Baker’s Tiger’ x ‘Apricot Nectar’.

All the best, Nev.