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

splinter1804 wrote:
Friday 09.01.15
Hi everyone – Well it’s back to physio this morning to see what new sort of torture they have devised for me. I’m afraid I don’t think the exercises are doing me as much good as my own exercises which relate to what I use my hand for the most e.g. holding a plant in my left hand whilst I fill the pot with potting mix, or maybe it’s a combination of both, who knows?

Brian – Good to see you back again; the last few days here have been very humid also and working in the shade house among all the brom’s and ferns beneath the benches makes it even worse and I’m certainly losing a lot of sweat which will hopefully equate to weight.

In relation to Neo.’Burnsie’s Spiral’, it’s a much tougher plant than it looks and certainly tougher than many other Neo’s. Although hanging it up beneath the shade cloth will improve colour, I don’t think this would be the best time of the year to move it; probably best to wait until the cooler months so it can acclimatise gradually.

When I mentioned Neo.‘Rose Blush’ yesterday I completely forgot to mention I also have another which looks a bit like the one on the BCR. (I swapped a bit of mine for a bit of John’s plant a few years ago) so now we both have the same plant.

You mention the colour in my last lot of pictures; I have always been attracted by colour, even more than shape (but it’s nice to have both in the one plant) and any of the crosses I’ve done were primarily with colour in mind. It was the same when I bred Budgies also, I didn’t try and breed the large show types (there were plenty of good breeders doing this), I bred for colour and could always sell them as fast as I could breed them as colour seems somehow to attract you attention.

I haven’t had much to do with Orthophytums, but the couple I had, grew like yours as well and then where the flowers were, they produced pups a bit unusual but interesting nevertheless.

Your Alc. ‘Devine Plum’ is looking good, but I don’t think you need to worry about it flowering just yet as it still has a bit of growing to do.

Colleen – Nice to hear from you and I hope you’re well away from the bushfire areas. It’s unfortunate that you’re copping the heat like the rest of S.A. but at least you’re managing to look after the local wild life as well as yourself and the boys and their pets.

I’ve been close to nature (especially birds) all my life and had never heard of “spoggies”. I had to look up Google to find out it’s another name for the common sparrow. I’ve always looked at them as a cheerful little bird and one I greatly respect as they are great survivors, and are spread worldwide, but never seem to cause any problems. Basically, they survive by picking up the crumbs left by other birds as they’re at the bottom end of the “pecking order”.

If your Ae. fasciata ‘Clara’ flowers have varied a bit, it’s possibly because it was from a tissue-cultured plant and sometimes this happens, but often settles down in the next generation. I suspect these plants, have had their genes turned upside down as a result of tissue culturing and on top of this they have more than likely been chemically treated to induce early flowering. This all upsets the plants metabolism which can sometimes take a while to recover.

Ae. ‘Clara’ is said to be a mutation of the normal pink-bracted Ae fasciata which was tissue-cultured and mass produced by “Deroose Plants” of Belgium who specialise in this area.
See: http://www.derooseplants.com/

From my own experiences with tissue cultured plants I haven’t had a lot of luck. I had an Aechmea (fasciata) ‘Morgana’which was also tissue cultured; it was in flower when I bought it, and after flowering, went on to produce countless pups which even after growing into maturity themselves, grew for several years, producing more pups, but never produced a single flower. In the end I binned the lot. It just goes to show that when you stuff around with “Mother Nature”, she often turns around and bites you on the bum for interfering.

You are lucky with your Ae. ‘Clara” as it has turned out exactly as it was supposed to do, so chalk one up for Colleen.

The Neo Guinea hybrid I posted a picture of was Neo.’Guinea’ x Self; There were several seedlings but I only kept about twelve which all looked similar to the one in the picture. It is a smallish plant only growing to about 5” high and does really well in a basket as it pups profusely, but it does require good light to get good colour. I’ll put one aside for you.

Vriesea Vr. Philippo-corburgii is a very handy and hardy Vriesea as it also grows well in the garden as long as it’s well drained. It will grow like wildfire if in a suitable spot and my friend sent me a pic of a beautiful clump he had growing and would you believe the deer from the National Park trampled and ate the lot, the day after he took the picture.....I’ll bet he said more than “bother”.

Sat. 10.01.15
Hi again everyone – hopefully I’ll get my post finished today without any disruptions, so straight back into it from where I left off yesterday.

Trish – Why worry about getting a name wrong? I’ve been doing it for years, but now you mention Neo. ‘Rosy Morn’, that’s another plant that goes through numerous colour changes as it matures.

Regarding your NOID that I said looks the same as my Neo. carolinae x concentrica, I’ve been trying to find a picture to justify what I said, but I can’t find one. I have several of it without the dark makings over the variegations but none with the markings. As you know the markings on variegated plants do alter a bit from season to season due to the instability of these plants, likewise the colour is influenced by the amount of light they are grown under. The only pic’s I have are of my plant when grown in a lower light area, hence the absence of the darker markings. I have had this plant with the darker marking though and as it’s similar to another I have called Neo. ‘Inkwell’, I prefer to try and grow it without the darker markings.
If you look at the pictures of Neo.’Inkwell’ on the BCR, you will see what I mean about the variability in markings as the two plants depicted here look different also. See: http://registry.bsi.org/?genus=NEOREGELIA&id=5017#5017

As I mentioned above to Colleen, Vr. Philippo-corburgii is a pretty tough plant so I wouldn’t be worrying too much about sun damage as long as you haven’t just moved it from a low light area. I had one growing in full sun during the heatwaves a few years back and only got about seven leaves slightly burned. I don’t think we give Vrieseas the credit for toughness that they deserve; during the same heatwave days, almost all of the Neo’s in the unprotected front garden got “cooked” but the Vrieseas remarkably came through unscathed.

Another thing, you mention is that one of yours is showing yellow pigmentation while the others are green. This isn’t unusual as there are several different clones around. I have one I swapped with a lady in Far North Queensland and the tips of the foliage are quite red. (See Pic.1)

Jean – Pleased to hear you’re getting some good rain; it certainly makes a change from the dry weather and I’ll bet the poor people in the bushfire areas wish you could send some their way.

It’s interesting what you say about having to move your Hallelujah; it doesn’t take long for them to lose their colour once they are deprived of the good light. I learned this the hard way once when I was having a sale. I had moved a lot of my Neo’s into the Vrieseas shade house where there was more space to show them off better. They were beautiful and full of colour when I moved them but after a week in the lower light, I realised they were starting to lose their colour..........I didn’t make that mistake again!

It seems like everyone “south of the border” has a different name for sparrows to New South Welshmen. What about our members from Queensland, what do you call them?

While you’re talking about birds, or more specifically cockatoos, we once went for a short break through Victoria and one night decided to stay at Hall’s Gap ............ at about five in the afternoon there were thousands of Short Billed Corellas came into the town and landed in the street trees. You couldn’t hear yourself think for the racket they kicked up. When I asked a local how they put up with the noise, he said, “It’s Ok, they always stop at seven o’clock”. Of course being the “out of towners”, we thought he was "having a lend of us", but no; right on the dot of seven there was silence and as they say “the silence was deafening”. What I’ve always wanted to know was, how did the birds know to stop at seven o’clock?

They’re certainly beautiful roses Jean, you certainly have the gardening skill, or is it just natural “Green Fingers”?

Well now that I‘ve caught up with yesterday’s posts I’ll try and get through today’s as well.

Teresa – I don’t know about the comet or anything about astronomy for that matter, but I do know I saw stars when the physio lady got stuck into my hand yesterday. She told me we had to get more movement back into the fingers and bent them to just when it was starting to hurt. She then wrapped a crepe bandage around my hand forcing my fingers into a fist shape which tightened with every turn, until it hurt like hell.

When I asked was she trying to break the fingers again, she gave it an extra turn, “just for the hell of it”. I then had to bathe the bandaged hand in hot water and keep trying to move the fingers within the bandage for ten minutes. I must say they did feel a bit better when I finished, but wasn’t too sure at first and it certainly wasn’t too pleasant at the time.

Colleen – It seems I’m almost back where I started, talking to you again Colleen.

Up here we don’t have a problem with the Corellas neither the short-billed or the long-billed ones, it’s the Sulphur Crested Cockatoos that cause all of the damage, especially to weather-board homes which are unattended. They chew the fascias, the window architraves and they especially like the red wood hand-rails on one particular weekender and have almost completely destroyed it in a single day when the owner was absent.

It’s good to see the boys involved in useful hobbies, my son’s often would experiment with a chemistry set and I remember once when they put something on some soap; it didn’t alter the colour but when you washed your hands, the water turned purple, and they thought it was a great joke. Unfortunately I forget how they did it after all of this time, or maybe I could get even with them.

Time to go and the pic’s today are Pic.1 the Vr. philippo-coburgii with the red leaf tips mentioned above. Pic’s 2 and 3 two of my Neo. carolinae x concentrica plants (from the same clone) showing how the colour and markings can vary, finally Pic's 4 and 5 my Neo. 'Rosy Morn' at various stages of maturity.

All the best, Nev.