Australian and New Zealand Gardening: bromeliads for novices and addicts, sep, 2012, 3 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone,

It looks like it will be another nice day down here again so I can hopefully get a bit more outside work done and when the legs and back start to get sore I can make my way to the garage and sit on my bum and clean up plants for the show.

Sue – I’m pretty sure you’re right with your ID of Perriam’s Pride for Karen’s unidentified Bill. When I said Foster’s Striate, I made the old mistake of trying to ID a plant by not looking at the “whole picture” and when I look more closely at the flowers they definitely aren’t Foster’s Striate flowers as they are more bunched.

What also threw me a bit was all of the spotting on the leaves; I have Bill. Perriam’s Pride and it has no spotting, nor does the pic of the plant on the BCR. However the pic’s on the FCBS by Kent Jacobsson shows a plant with just very slight spotting (which isn’t obvious until you look closely) so maybe it’s unstable like my Foster’s Striate or maybe it could even be a hybrid between Perriam’s Pride and something else. Does your plant or anyone else’s have spots as well? Whatever it is, it’s a nice well grown plant anyway.

What you say about bi-generic plants being sterile and unable to set seed was once thought to be the case. Do you remember when you and Bill were down here I showed you a couple of these seedlings and they did look very much like Neo’s (in fact you took a liking to the colours in one in particular) but since then I have had a few that turned out more like the XNiduregelia seed parent.

In fact I put up pics on one of the forums showing seedlings from XNiduregelia ‘Something Special’ crossed with ???? I suspect another Neoregelia. I can’t say for sure as I didn’t do the crossing and I can’t get a clear answer from the “insects” as they won’t own up to doing the crossing either. Anyway when I put up these pictures on one the overseas forums, I was virtually accused of telling “porkies” by a well know international hybridizer, but then a couple of other growers came into the argument and said they had made seedlings from supposed sterile “mules” also (this is what they sometimes call bi-generic crosses) and the grower who first made the comment then said it had been the case every time they tried to cross them and that is what they based their assumption on.

Since then I have read about quite a few growers around the world doing successful crosses using a bi-generic parent and I am currently corresponding with a NZ grower who has commenced a breeding program using bi-generics as parents. So far he’s only developed fertile seed when the bi-generic was one parent and when both parents are bi-generic all the seed has been sterile (so far).

Ian – Based on the little I know about bi-generic crosses so far, I say to you, “go for it”, because as Sue says “you'll never ever know, if you don't have a go”.

I put up the pic of your Crypt on two of the larger forums yesterday and so far just one answer. The answer comes from an Australian grower who also has a brom nursery so his answer of Crypt Black Mystic could be pretty near the mark. I’ll wait until we get some more suggestion so they can all be compared against the BCR to give us a possible definite ID, but so far ‘Black Mystic’ looks pretty promising. To see Crypt Black Mystic, go to: http://botu07.bio.uu.nl/bcg/bcr/index.php?genus=CRYPTANTHUS&... or the FCBS Photo Index at http://fcbs.org/pictures.htm

Colleen - Good to hear you’re on the mend again. What’s the plant on the left of your pic, is it Ae Burgundy?

You say you just spray any scale on your Epis with detergent and cooking oil. You must just have managed to get the exact mixture of the two unless you are using Rob Smythe’s recipe. I say this because if the oil component is too great and they are exposed to too much sun, you can fry the leaves on your plants, so be very careful. A well-known and tested recipe for the Canola Oil mix can be found by googling “Rob Smythe’s canola oil spray” and go to the heading called [CANOLA WHITE OIL - "Oils aint Oils Soll!”]

Trish – At first I thought your first pic was ‘Hot Gossip or ‘Predatress’ as they do look a bit similar but a closer inspection of the very fine spotting nails it as ‘Cane Fire’. In case anyone’s interested, it’s from a cross done by Shane Zaghini using Neo. [carolinae x concentrica] x Neo. 'Barbarian'.

You say your next one is ‘Leopard’; could it be ‘Catlan’s Leopard’? If it is, it’s a really magnificent Neoregelia when well grown. Next is the ever popular Blushing Tiger which everyone should have in their collections as it’s such a good grower and responds so well to high light. My main interest lies with the last pic though, Ae ‘Foster’s Freckles’, this is a plant I’ve been chasing for a very long time so if anyone has a pup they want to swap/sell, please send me a D-Mail.

Ian – Your pic of the problem plant suggests to me two possible causes, either too much water (as I have found all of the Fosters Favourite types prefer to be grown a bit on the dry side) or it’s suffering the effects of being grown beneath or near CCA treated timber and the copper has leached from the timber onto the plant during rain or watering (Copper is fatal to brom’s)

Your second pic is not Recurvata var recurvata, it is Ae Aztec Gold which is a sport from recurvata which John Catlan originally stabilized. You did very well to get one from Bunning’s as I don’t imagine they would be available there very often. I probably wouldn’t use it in the cross you mentioned in a previous post because when you look closely you see it has the yellow margins (flava-marginated) on the leaves and I fear they would probably give the same result as the white margins I spoke of (albo-marginated) resulting in albino seedlings.

However as Sue said before, “you'll never ever know, if you don't have a go”. I can’t speak from personal experience and it’s just a suspicion I have, but perhaps it would be worth a try if only to either prove or disprove that those plants with yellow leaf margins will also throw albino seedings.

That’s about it for today I’ll finished with a five pic’s from the XNiduregelia x ? just to show that bi-generic plants can produce fertile seed.

All the best, Nev.