Australian and New Zealand Gardening: OUR BROMELIADS INTO 2015.. , 5 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – Well Teresa anyway; where have you all gone?

Yesterday was a day where I didn’t seem to achieve anything to do with brom’s as I has a heap of little things to do and places to go which took up most of the morning. The mower man didn’t come to cut the grass until about 2.00pm as he wanted to give it time to dry out a bit after all of the rain. By the time he had finished it was wild bird feeding time and the best part of the day was over, so I went into the garage and cut up about 500 name tags out of old venetian blind strips, just so the day wasn’t a complete waste.

Today I hope to tackle the repotting of my very large Neo’s. Yesterday I was able to find bamboo stakes at Bunnings and these will be better suited than the skewers I normally use for the smaller plants, so thanks to whoever it was that mentioned they use these and where they can be purchased. I must have used thousands over the years staking my orchid spikes but never gave them a thought in regards as a support for bromeliads, so thanks again to whoever mentioned it and jogged my memory.

Teresa – You say you like the colours in my hybrids and this is exactly why I chose to use the parents I have used when hybridising, as colour is my main concern also. Of course if it turns out to be combined with a nice shape, well that’s a bonus, but primarily colour is what I’m after. All bromeliad breeders select their parents with an objective in mind and my prime aim is for nice clear colours, whether they are bright or subtle doesn't matter as long as they are clear. With me, shape is a secondary priority and as I said an added bonus, but I like nothing more than to look at a collection of plants and see loads of different colours. With some collections, when you stand back and look at them in total, they all seem to blend into a sea of uninteresting green shades and there’s no real standouts. It’s these collections which benefit from a couple of brightly coloured plants here and there to break the monotony, and what a difference they make to the overall appearance.

Don’t get me wrong; when breeding with this objective in mind you still produce many “nothing” plants which don’t meet the requirements, and if they don’t show any promise of colour initially, it’s unlikely they ever will, so these should go in the green bin.

You say,” Pic 1 & Pic 5 are strikingly different to the rest”; this is true because they are from different crossings. Pic.1 is from a selfing of an unusual variegated sport which was produced from a plant supposed to be, and purchased as Neo. ‘Painted Lady’. It looked like Painted Lady but there’s now some thought it may have been a Painted Lady hybrid to be able to produce a seedling like that, (that’s what the experts say at least).

Pic. 5 is a different altogether and is from a bi-generic hybrid called xNiduregelia ‘Something Special crossed with an unknown pollen parent. (xNiduregelia is a cross between a Nidularium and a Neoregelia). I didn’t do this cross; the plant was done by someone or something else and was in flower when I bought it. I just planted and grew on the seed as it seemed interesting and I was curious to see what it would produce. [Besides all of the experts told me the seed would be infertile as they were from a “mule” (bi-generic parent)].

You also say, “I can see similarities with your earlier photos of Neo concentrica x (Charm x Cracker Jack)”. That’s very observant of you, and the reason for the similarity is that they are all from the same grex. The colours from this particular grex were over a vast range and this is why I suspected that this first cross I did may have had some help with the pollination from ants or other insects; it just didn’t seem possible to get such a large range of colours from the same two parents. There is a saying when hybridising that “you only ever know for sure who the seed parent is”, because you can never be certain whether or not an ant, bee or small bird has visited the flower just before you and already crossed it with pollen from an entirely different plant altogether.

I’ll go through my files and find five pictures from that first cross I did just to show the variation I’m speaking about, and if you’re interested I can show you even more different plants in the days to come.

The cross was Neo. concentrica x (’Charm’ x ‘Cracker Jack’); as you know, concentrica is a well-known medium/large species with a mauve/purple centre and the ‘Charm’ x ‘Cracker Jack’ is a medium sized reddish/maroon colour with slight spotting.

All the best, Nev.