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03/05: Postscript to March/April Bromeletter by Peter Franklin.

Two Plant Names Resolved
I have more information concerning plants mentioned in the Meeting Notes of the March/April Bromeletter.
Nidularium ‘Don Roberts’
The first is the strangely variegated Nidularium that J.T. brought in for show and tell in January. This plant is a sport of Nidularium innocentii var. lineatum which has transverse blotches of white rather than longitudinal fine lines. It arose some 15 years ago in the collection of Don Roberts of Newcastle.
The odd variegation is very stable, and the plant has been registered with the BSI Cultivar Registry as Nidularium ‘Don Roberts’.
I have good success growing this plant in shady and dry conditions, but then, all of my plants are grown fairly dry!
Aechmea ‘Miraculous Find’
The other plant that I would like to comment on is the unknown Aechmea of Ian Hook in December. I recognise the plant from his description of the wishy-washy colours, tubular calyx, green/yellow petals and an overall look of an Aechmea nudicaulis.
I obtained mine from Olive Trevor about 10 years ago, and at the time it bore the label Ae. podantha, which, of course, is far from the truth. At the time, Olive knew that the name podantha was clearly wrong and thought that the plant resembled a nudicaulis and fasciata cross.
In some years, my plant suffers from the cold, which is somewhat of a surprise, especially if it does have Ae. nudicaulis in its make-up; and it certainly looks as though it does.
This plant has obviously found its way into several collections and has been without a name for rather a long time. We should give it a cultivar name so we can at least write out a correct name tag for it. I suggest Aechmea ‘Miraculous Find’. If it was a real Ae. podantha, then it certainly would have been a miraculous find.
For those of you that enjoy cryptic crosswords, the letters of ‘miraculous find’ are actually an anagram of ………. Well, I leave that up to the curious reader.


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Updated 19/06/06