Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS FOR NOVICES & ADDICTS - NOVEMBER 2012, 1 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Good morning all, not much of a day today, it's been drizzling overnight and looks very overcast with a promise of more rain for the garden today.

Breeindy - I'm pleased you managed to get hold of an Amazing Grace and I'm posting a pic of the dark form I had before it reverted back to the light form. It's a pic of a “Mother Plant” and she's almost “past it” but it will give you an idea of the colour. I have found it to be a variable plant due to being unstable, and the colours can range from the light form right through to the dark form and other colours in between.

Sue – I always thought you were a fair dinkum “bromeliad addict”. Even when you said you were unloading all of your plants to go travelling I though to myself “we'll see”, well we can see, and my suspicions are proved correct, so congratulations on your haul and we look forward to hearing more about your new acquisitions accompanied with lots of pictures of course. I wish I was up your way so I could go to your sale but then where would I put them all?

As for your question about why “Bromagic” (owned by Keith Golinski at the time) registered so many of Allan Freeman's (look alike) hybrids with different names was the topic of a quite heated discussion on the Garden Web a few years back. This wasn't just with one particular cross but was with a number of different crosses and at that time Kieth Golinski was registering hundreds of plants in one go and really tied up the BCR so everyone else had to wait for ages. His argument was that if each plant was worthy of registering, (no matter how similar they looked to each other) then they should have a registered name.

Wendy – To answer your question about tipping the water out, my first answer would be a question to you; who tips the water out when these plants are growing in habitat? The thing is though, you need clear access to the flowers to pollinate them, and if the water is too high you need to empty it; but also keep in mind that if the cup is full, it will prevent ants from getting in among the flowers and doing their “own thing” as well, so make sure you tag the flowers so you know which ones you pollinated. One other thing I have found is that when crossing a very big plant with a much smaller one, often the pollen from the smaller one won't pollinate the larger plant flowers so it's wise to do the cross both ways.

As for your question about whether to grow seeds from NOIDS or not, that's entirely a personal choice. As we constantly see on this forum, there are some really beautiful NOIDS around and if the NOID you are using is something really nice and the pollen parent is likewise, then “go for it” but from that point on make sure you keep good records and tag everything. The down side is that being NOIDS, you can't look up the BCR to check what crosses they have been used in before, and what the results were. There have been some really beautiful hybrids produced from very “ordinary” looking plants and some very "ordinary" hybrids produced from some beautiful plants, it all gets down to the gene mix and what Mother Nature intends to do. Sorry I can't be of more help, but I think when using NOIDS it's a case of trial and error.

When you have a bit of spare time it would be worth reading this post from the Garden Web Bromeliad Forum as it might explain it all better than I did. http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/bromeliad/msg0705053...

I'll finish now with a few pic's, Pic.1 is for Breeindy and is my Neo.'Amazing Grace' (Dark Form), Next are a few different Aechmea Orlandianas from my old file pic's, Pic 2 is my Ae Orlandiana 'Dark One'; in this pic it's only about half coloured and eventually all leaves will be the colour of the one at top left. It's so dark it looks almost entirely black when fully coloured and not what you would call an attractive plant, but I bought it because it was the the closest thing I have to a “black” Aechmea. Pic. 3 is my Ae Orlandiana 'Majestic', Pic 4 is Ae Orlandiana 'Stain Glass' and Pic 5 (and my favourite) is Ae Orlandiana 'Touch-a-Pink'

All the best, Nev.