Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS FOR NOVICES & ADDICTS APRIL 2012, 4 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone,

Wow! A new month already; I’d forgotten all about it until Tash “popped out of the woodwork” to start a new page for us, thanks Tash.

Colleen – I’ll get some of those saundersii seedlings in the mail to you after the Easter weekend. Even though they are “selfed” (for those of you not into hybridizing, this simple means the mother plant was fertilised with its own pollen) and usually with species, the seedlings are all the same as the mother plant, but sometimes there can be one or two that’s a little different, either better or worse shape/markings than the mother, so hopefully you or some of the others who want some, may be the lucky ones.

Your Neo. Thunderbird x Avalon looks like it still has a bit of growing and colouring up to do yet so it will be interesting to see what it turns out like; and as I say, getting seedlings is like getting a lottery ticket; you never know what you will get.

Who are the “ankle biters” in your pic. are they grand children? Whoever they are they look ready to demolish that birthday cake and just for the record whose birthday cake is it?

Tash – Gee it’s great to see you back here again and I’m sure we’re all pleased to see you. What’s the name of that beautifully shaped Neo. you posted in the first post of the month? It’s a “little ripper”.

You’ve had a pretty rough time with the rot problem since moving into your new shade house, but hopefully you have the cause now sorted out and can take some remedial steps to rectify the problem. What you have just gone through just goes to show how willing most fellow brom growers are to try and help a mate in distress. I’ve been following your “saga” on face book and the amount of suggestions and possible causes and remedies put forward by other growers was enough to write a book about, it was “mind boggling”.

Hopefully things will now improve with the advice from the “Old Master” (I’d better drop the “old” or I’ll be getting “told”) but I do very much respect him and the knowledge he so freely shares with everyone. Although I’ve never seen him in person, and don’t expect I ever will now, as travel is out of the question for me, but I know he is only a phone call away and is there to offer any advice on a problem I might have. I am of course referring to Jack Koning of Port Macquarie, a hybridizer of world note and a very knowledgeable man who freely shares his advice to anyone willing to listen.
I think I may have said to you Tash that the problem is probably something that’s pretty simple and is looking us in the face and we can’t see it, but I know I certainly never thought about that; but then we often miss the obvious while looking “outside the square”.

I once lost a batch of about twelve or so Ae Lueddemanniana seedlings to rot. The centre leaves were all colouring up this beautiful red colour and I thought I’d cracked some champions in one of my very first batch of seedlings, but my excitement soon turned to bitter disappointment when the centres started to pull out. It was following a heat wave we had down here one New Year’s Day and on first appearances it seemed like the water in the cups had got so hot it had cooked the tender centre leaves and caused rot, as the plants affected were all hanging up near the roof. However it was later revealed when looking at all of the other plants, that small slugs had sheltered during the day time in the centre of every plant (they hadn’t damaged them, it was just somewhere they were sheltering as they do during the day) but the water in the cups of the highest plants had got so hot that it killed the slugs which in turn started to rot, this of course started the cup rotting as well. So that’s the other side of the coin where the obvious is not always necessarily the cause of the problem and you do need to look outside of the square as well. (Sorry Tash I forgot to mention that one to you when we were trying to work out the cause of your problem; probably because it left such a bitter taste in my mouth I’d consequently wiped it out of my memory bank)

I’ll post a pic of what a group of these seedlings actually looked like and you will understand my initial excitement with the colour and then my disappointment when I realised it was rot.

On a final note Tash, don’t forget that brom’s are probably the most resilient plants of all and if it’s possible to reproduce themselves they’ll find a way if at all possible. Never give up and “bin” a supposedly dead brom until you are certain they are unsalvageable as I’ve had them put up pups just from a bit of dead looking rhizome, admittedly the pup was very undersized but I managed to eventually build up a plant from that little “runt”.

MyaC – I haven’t seen you here before, so a big welcome to our friendly little group and I hope you continue to stay with us and share some of your Magnetic Island knowledge, experience and pictures with us. It’s amazing what we all pick up just by sharing our experiences with each other.

I must correct you though when you say your friend is a maniac brom collector, brom growers aren’t maniac’s they just come in varying degrees of bromeliaditis ranging from acute to chronic and it seems that she just hasn’t been formally diagnosed yes. If the acute stage isn’t nipped in the bud, it very quickly turns into the incurable chronic stage where we can only just treat the symptoms by continually buying/swapping more brom’s and following the basic rule of all brom growers, “there’s always room for ne more”

Shirley – I’ll send you a few saundersii seedlings s well after Easter; and for anyone who missed my offer in the previous month’s post, I have a surplus of Vriesea saundersii seedlings about 2” high and will send a few to anyone who wants them for the cost of postage (while stocks last). Just send me your postal details and we’ll go from there.

They’re two very nice examples of two very popular hybrids, both of which are very variable. I think from memory there are about 28 registered different Aussie Dream hybrids from that grex and there are quite a few from the Meyendorffii grex as well, with some being plain colours, some variegated and with the added bonus there is also a miniature clone as well (Meyendorffii Minor). These are two great hybrids for a collection as there are so many variations you could build a good collection around just these two hybrids alone. I have a few different ones myself and will include a few pic’s as well.

That’s it for today and I’ll finish with a mix of pic’s starting with the disappointing collection of what I thought were some new rare hybrids of Ae Lueddemanniana; the plants on the left with the nice red leaves were unfortunately the ones with the rot. Next there are four different clones of Neo. Meyendorffii. The first one is Neo Meyendorffii 'albo marginata', next is Neo. Meyendorffii 'Red Striata, next is Neo Meyendorffii 'Variegata' (Red Form, and finally Neo. Meyendorffii Variegata II.
As I can only post five pic's at a time, I'll post some of the Meyendorffii 'Minor' grex tomorrow.

All the best, Nev.