Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS FOR MARCH ....2014, 5 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – Had a pretty good day yesterday and got a fair bit done in the morning. I set up some old cut down polystyrene boxes to make a low bench along the wall of the shade house opposite the frog pond, so that material has now been re-cycled twice. I relocated quite a few plants from one of the over-crowded benches in the shade house to the new area also so that will give some of my better plants more space and room to breathe.

All was going well until about 2.30 when we copped a hell of a thunder storm and the rain really pelted down for about ten minutes, so that put a stop to my work for the day. It didn't last long but the ferocity of the rain was sufficient to drench everything and make any more work impossible. I'm not all that worried though as I'm well and truly getting on top of this “reno.” now and should have it finished on Friday.

I won't get anything done here today as it's the day I go to the museum, so just office work today and then back into the brom work tomorrow.

Cody – Pleased to hear the birth went well. It's a beautiful looking little foal and it's good to see it doing what comes naturally. You must be a proud Surrogate Mum, Ha! Ha! It's great to share a very special bond with animals.

Colleen – It seems they got the weather forecast wrong yet again and we got the storm you were promised. Don't be too disappointed though as it only lasted for about ten minutes and mostly just a lot of noise and lightening and just enough rain to make everything wet and unpleasant to work with.

I realised as soon as I posted that pic that someone would ask the name and I meant to look it up and forgot. I think it's one of the many plants from the “Aussie Dream” grex, but I'll check later and let you now tomorrow.

As for typing on MS Word and then cutting and pasting – why don't you either file my instructions or print them off so you have them for future reference if you have more problems with D.G. eating your posts?

Your plant with two names is definitely not Alcantarea Imperialis Rubra, it is a Neoregelia. I'm not familiar with a plant called Neo.'Tiger' and when I looked it up on the BCR I see there isn't a 'Tiger' registered either. What I did find is that there are 10 different plants with their names starting with “Tiger” however none of which looked like your plant.

I decided to also look on the FCBS site while I was at it, and found there are two plants listed there as “Tiger”; there's Tiger (Skotak – 3661) and Tiger (Baker – 3662). From here I went back to the BCR and see these plants are listed separately as 'Skotak's Tiger' which we should all be familiar with and which is a large plant with a distinctive “tiger” pattern and colours with prominent spikes. Secondly there is also a 'Baker's Tiger which is entirely different and has some similarities to 'Lambert's Pride'. Although the colour is different to your plant, it does also have similar semi-concentric markings and it's just possible the difference in colour is due to light quality.

Was your plant grown in bright light or low light? Without waiting for your answer, I would say at this point that your plant could be Neo.'Baker's Tiger'.

Wendy – There's certainly no problem distinguishing the seed capsules on the helicoid Billbergias as they shine like “silver balls” about 1/2" in diameter, but as I said, all of my plants are the boring grey/green colour with the tall tubular shape, although some of the Bill. 'Rosea' seedlings have some nice barring. I will be interested to see the flowers on that coloured seedling which came from seed collected from a helicoide type Bill. at Carol Evan's place in Bundaberg to see if it's a helicoid type like the mother plant

Like you say, the Ae. nudicaulis are excellent subjects for mounting on trees as are Ae. orlandiana plants. I find the orlandiana a bit tricky to identify as they go through so many colour changes on their way to maturity. In fact I have one plant which when its about adult size just appears as black markings on a green plant but when fully mature it's almost completely black and I can't remember whether it's 'Dark Knight' or 'Dark One' as unfortunately many of these varietal names are just “pet names” and are unregistered. Maybe we'll, have to compare some pic's in the future with a view of swapping some different plants with each other; same with the nudicaulis.

Too bad DG won't let you post pic's today, maybe you need to contact them and speak to Melody to find out what's wrong.

Shirley – Thanks heaps for adding my name to the Neo 'Mini Me' list and all I have to do now is anxiously wait for it to pup. Maybe you could give it a bit of IVF treatment to help hurry things along.

As for the Neo. 'Macho Splotcho' being named after splotches, I'd thought of that, but going on the pic on the BCR where it is registered, it only had a few not very well defined spots and certainly nothing we could class as blotches and I though there may be some other reason.

I must say I'm pretty “chuffed” when I read what you say about Colleen's plant looking like a Neo you have called 'Baker’s Tiger'. I have a swelled head now as it seems my detective work was right on the money. …........................A man's gotta be right occasionally.

Your building project is sounding like the work on my “reno” hard to get started and when I do, keeping up the momentum without any interruptions. How's Michael's back coming along? Probably building new tunnel houses isn't the best thing he could be doing just now so best to wait a bit longer until it's properly better..........................What' happened? ...................................

...................................Well it's 7.20am and Dave's Garden has decided it wants to shut down and won't let me open it again so I'll have to pick this up later. I just checked again and it's now 7.32 and I still can't open D.G. so hopefully, I'll finish this when I get home from the museum this afternoon.

Back again finally; it seems like the Gremlin's gone at last and I can once more open and read the posts.

Back to Shirley again - Although the pic's of your Vrieseas are ones we've seen before, they still make a nice change from Neoregelias every day. I like your pic of Baker's Tiger although I don't recall seeing that one before.

Finally a big “Get Well Soon” to anyone on the sick list also a “Hi” to anyone who hasn't had time to post due to other commitments.

Time to go again and I'll finish today with some pic's of Neo's I took the other day when I went a bit “snap happy” after the storm.

All the best, Nev.

PS Colleen -The name of that Neo. you asked about is Neo. 'Dream Baby' and it was a nice surprise I once got from Tash and Jason.