Australian and New Zealand Gardening: Bromeliads for Novices and Addicts - February 2013, 3 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Here we go again – It looks like it's just you and I today Shirley.

I spent yesterday at the Light Rail Museum and while there had a look at the brom garden which members of our Brom Society had planted about twelve months ago. Unfortunately the chap who usually looks after the garden has been unwell for a while and unable to attend and during the heat waves, with everyone thinking about their own gardens, this one was completely forgotten and subsequently copped a lot of damage which was made even worse with no follow up treatment, not even watering until the rain eventually started. There are a lot of burnt and severely dehydrated plants there now and it will be interesting to see just what Mother Nature intends to do about it. No doubt there will be a few losses, but I'm confident that most of them will “bounce back” and start the life cycle all over again. I'll see if I can arrange for some of our Brom. Society members to come down and lend a hand to tidy it up a bit as it's beyond me as I'm flat out just trying to look after my own garden. Anyway I'll keep you posted on how things turn out.

Good luck with the Skoria Shirley, I'll be interested to hear how your trial goes, I planted another half dozen pups in it the day before yesterday just to see if the previous results were influenced very much by the abnormal weather as it seems to have caused a few strange things to happen in the garden lately.

I've noticed that quite a few of the brom's in the shade house are starting to lose colour which down here doesn't usually happen until about April. Another strange thing has happened to the "Pony Tail Palm" which usually has about three flower spikes on it each year. Just a week ago I cut off the dead flower spikes which had been burnt to a crisp during the heatwave and yesterday morning I noticed there are nine new flower spikes just popping their heads out of the foliage which is most unusual as it never flowers at this time of the year and never more than three spikes at a time anyway. Maybe Mother Nature thought it was going to die and this is a natural response to try and produce some seed so it can re-produce itself. I've also noticed that two of the brom seedlings that were growing pups have just “bolted” and the pups have become enormous almost triple the usual size in a couple of weeks and now at least twice the size of the mother plant. (See pic's 1 and 2).

Shirley are your power failures due to the recent floods? We've been lucky down here with no interruptions, unlike back in the 50's when we were often getting “blackouts” and “brownouts”. Just last week we had a notification that due to necessary work on the grid, the power would be off from 9.30pm until 5.30 am the following morning and to switch off and unplug all computers, TV's etc. to prevent damage when the power came back on again. After doing all of this the power stoppage didn't eventuate which was probably due to the heavy rain we were getting at the time, so it looks like there will be a power cut in the near future when they try to get this work done again.

I like the pic of your Neo. 'Tossed Salad', it's a very attractive plant and the Neo. 'Tricolour' is nice as well. For some time this plant was called Neo. Carolinae 'Tricolor' and it got to the stage where almost every variegated NOID was carrying that name. It's interesting to read about what the BCR has to say about Neo. Tricolor, part of which says …...... “described and named Neoregelia carolinae var. tricolor which became N. carolinae forma tricolor in Phytologia 1967 and was completely ignored in 'An Alphabetical List of Bromeliad Binomials”.

You can read the lot at:
http://botu07.bio.uu.nl/bcg/bcr/index.php?genus=NEOREGELIA&i...

There's also an interesting entry about the Neo. 'Tricolor Group' and this can be found in the BCR at: http://botu07.bio.uu.nl/bcg/bcr/index.php?genus=NEOREGELIA&i...

Time to go already so I'll finish with a few more pic's firstly Pic.1 and Pic.2 are of the fast growing large pups I mentioned above. They are on two Neo 'Gee Whiz' x Concentrica hybrids I made about four years ago and are much larger than the rest of the grex. Both plants have put up two pups each which are so large, they completely obliterate the mother plants. It's easy to see the Concentrica influence in the plant in Pic.1; as for the plant in Pic.2, I still don't know what way that will go. Pic. 3 shows a sun damaged Vr. Phillipo Cobegii (which I must trim the dead bits off now the hot weather has passed). Pic.4 shows two other plants which have suddenly shot up through the weeds after the heat wave and the following rain; the one on the left is a "Blanchie" seedling and I don't remember the name of the Neo. on the right, Pic.5 is Ae. Blanchetiana x Ae Eurycorymbus which I grew from seed and is now coming into flower.

All the best, Nev.