Australian and New Zealand Gardening: Bromeliads For May 2014, 1 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – I spent quite a productive day here yesterday and deep watered and dead-leafed half of the collection; the other half will get done today hopefully. What a difference a little bit of attention makes.

Teresa – Thanks for the advice on the dog. I've come to the conclusion that the main thing she needs is reassurance; last night when she was asleep in her bed, she didn't see me when I went to bed.

It must have been about 3.00 this morning when I heard her galloping up the hall and into our room; I could hear her tracking with her nose and she came around my side of the bed and just stood quietly for a minute or two listening, and then stood up on the side of the bed, gave my face a quick lick and then went back to her own bed where she still is as I type this (5.30am). It seems to me she must have thought I had left her, and once she was reassured I was still there, all was well again.

Trish – Aren't you and Joe just the busy little bees, flitting here and flitting there?

Just a quick word of advice about Neo.‘Prince of Darkness’ when you say, “I have placed it in some good light in the garden so am keeping an eye on how much darker it will get”. Some of these darker foliage plants need good light to get the dark colour while others need low light to attain the darkness. With some, increasing the light will sometimes cause the colour to bleach out so a close watch is necessary as I don't remember whether this one needs high or low light.

Looking at your pic's now and I haven't seen Neo.'Frivolity' before and straight away I was attracted by the wide leaves and had an inkling it could be a Freeman hybrid and I was delighted that my suspicion was correct. You can almost pick an Allan Freeman hybrid by the wonderful wide thick leaves as it seems to be a signature with many of his hybrids. However as I look at the pic. on the BCR I see yours has a lot of colouring to do yet and eventually will be the unusual beautiful colour shown on the BCR at:
http://registry.bsi.org/?genus=NEOREGELIA&id=4477#4477

As I look at the pic's my eyes keep returning to the Neo. concentrica cross in pic's 2 and 3; what a beautiful well grown plant with such perfect conformity and clean, fresh, glossy finish. Do you know what the other parent was?

I did a Neo. concentrica cross using (Charm x Cracker Jack) as the second parent and some of the seedlings were so similar you would think they were out of the same grex as yours. The only difference being that mine aren't as well grown as yours; in fact I'll post five example from that cross and ask you to especially compare the plant in Pic.1 with your's, I think the resemblance is uncanny.

That's all for today and the following pic's are all from the same grex of Neo. concentrica x ('Charm' x 'Cracker Jack').

All the best, Nev.