January/February 2006 :Bromeliad Gazette. Vol:30. Number:01

November Meeting from the Secretary’s desk
The saga of the rare Fosterella has been resolved! In our last Gazette you may remember Corky’s plant which I felt could be Fosterella vasquezii and I was waiting for it to flower! It must be a week ago when I returned home to find this plant on my doorstep with a little note telling me all what Corky knows about Fosterella. It was in flower! Remember the petals are 7 mm long so you have to get up close and cuddly. These days I rarely use my microscope preferring to use my computer scanner. I crank it up to 1200 dots per inch and scan! I then magnify my image to see what is there. It is marvellous what you see this way that you miss with the aging naked eye. If we went purely on leaf width which is what I did initially at 2cm wide this leads to F. vasquezii but when you looked at the flower and saw the sepal had a red tip you could see we had a depauperate F. elata. If you can remember a couple of years ago Len Colgan got some ex-frozen seed from Heidelberg University in Germany. These would be the only plants of F. elata in Australia and we can thank Maureen Hick for getting the seed to germinate. The plant is about 40cm in diameter and has wavy dark green leaves with lighter edges and near the centre of the plant these are covered on the top with silvery trichomes making them glisten. These trichomes seem to repel water rather than absorb in similar fashion to Cryptanthus. An attractive plant even when not in flower and if you appreciate Gypsophila flowers then you will not be disappointed with the graceful flower spikes.
This leads me to cogitate on what is a Bromeliad Connoisseur?
Is it one who pays high prices on a new hybrid where you do not know mother or father, or is it one who tries to grow species?

Fosterella elata. Photos by Derek Butcher.

Saturday November 12th was Hectic Sales day.
A few stalwarts had set up the tables and brought in most of the sales plants on the Friday afternoon to save a panic for the Saturday morning opening at 9am. Despite us opening an hour early there was still a crowd waiting for the doors to open. One wonders on the wisdom of an early start because the rush was over by midday when the sale plants were thinning out anyway. AND confusion can easily be caused when we have our Show and Sales in March and can only open at 10am because of Judging. It was good to see some of our newer members lending a hand behind the counter and I think they enjoyed the excitement. Our problem is going to be plant supplies as the number on our Address list of interested purchasers grows without a proportionate growth in members who are prepared to spend the time in potting up their spare plants. You will never be a millionaire selling bromeliads in Adelaide and the prime incentive is to give others the opportunity to acquire different plants at a reasonable price. In other words promote the growing of Bromeliads.
Plant sales was well over $6000 which returned the Society over $1000 which more than covers a years Hall hire. Interest in the Raffle was again high and there was a trend to buy Bromeliad books which is a service we provide with very little profit. While this day was promoted as a Sales day we did have a few display plants as examples of what we do grow and what we knew would still be there by afternoon! Even so, many could not read the signs ‘Display only’ and were willing to buy!

Sunday November 13th was meeting day. – No rest for the wicked!
Gird up your loins! If you will be around in 2009 that is the time we are proposing to host the Australian Bromeliad Conference. We will never have the hybrids that Queensland has to offer but there are other ways of satisfying the needs of Bromeliad connoisseurs – that word again!
Changing of the guard - Lynn Hudson of Cairns is taking over as the Australian Director of the BSI from 2006.
March in 2006 is when EVERYTHING happens in Adelaide including and State Government Election which has forced us to have our March meeting on the last Sunday in February – so don’t forget!
Luckily the afternoon was scheduled as a casual meeting where members were asked to bring in something edible for afternoon ‘tea’ The response was great and nobody went hungry! But before we were allowed at the tables we had the pup exchange which went off without incident with no two members fighting over the same plant. Then the plant display where Len Colgan was the only one to bring in plants which made it easier for him to talk about them. Perhaps we others were too worn out from the Saturday effort! There was a bit of extremes. First there was a very colourful unnamed Billbergia hybrid that Len had acquired from Len Summers in Melbourne. These are difficult to identify at the best of times and this seemed to have links to Don Beadle from Florida. Then there were the ultra pricklies in the form of Orthophytum which is an interest of Len’s. He goes regularly to the back blocks of Victoria to bring back prickly challenges. He had some interesting specimens in flower. One is currently under review with Harry Luther to find out what it might be. Now this is where the word connoisseur comes up –Uncle Derek has found a new word to play with. He also had a few tillandsias of which the most interesting was a Tillandsia tixtlaensis. This comes from Tixtla in the State of Guerrero in Mexico. Why do I tell you this? Because you will have to go there if you want another one and so will Len! The plant was originally found in 1990 and flowered soon afterwards in the collection of Renate Ehlers. It was not until 1997 that Renate described it as T. tixtlaensis but has not published it. I believe one of the reasons is that it is too close to T. bourgaei. This name will ring a bell with Eileen Mullins because she nurtured a plant with this name for many years and was pleased as punch when it flowered – but that is all it did! It is a monocarpic plant.

I will now do one of my sidetrackings. Geoff Lawn of WA is currently researching for an article on this phenomenon in the Bromeliad world. We all know that a pansy is monocarpic – don’t we! It flowers and dies but does it quickly and is called an annual. But what is the advantage to say Puya raimondii which takes 30 years or more to flower and grows to a total height of say 10 metres and then dies with no offsets! Some Tillandsias act this way too but some species can have plants that set seed and die and some plants that offset to flower again. But Len will be pleased to know that he must make the most of this flowering while it lasts!
All enjoyed the afternoon tea and it was on to the auction. Colin Waterman must have done a good job last year because he was asked to perform again even though he is a bit of a bully in extracting money. Mind you, Eileen Mullins was pretty efficient in collecting the money too! I am not quite so sure about the technical advice given by the Technical advisor – Len Colgan! Whatever, the three of them raised over $400 – many for just $2 a pop.

Where there is a will there is a way.
At the July meeting, Len Colgan presented a Powerpoint display of Bromeliads A-Z thanks to his Secretary knowing how to use Powerpoint software but we all agree it was a fine effort. Len had felt it was a good idea for a meeting to show the full range of Bromeliads to show new members and I had the job of selecting images from my computer file. I only have 25,000 to pick from – I have been collecting them for the past 6 years! All genera were represented with some genera containing more than one image because of subgenera and popularity of certain species. When having a slide show of images it is a help to have the plant name on the image – something you don’t have with an ordinary slide show. This is also what Len’s secretary did and she made very few spelling mistakes indeed. There are so many programs that can be used on a computer to add names and each has a little bit missing in my experience. Usually this is added to the image in a different colour so it stands out. Recently I have resorted to adding a white border and putting the name here in black. To my aging eyes I find this easier to read!
So we had all these images in Powerpoint and Len sent a CD of this to the Bromeliad Society International for their use in promoting Bromeliads either for personal use or Societies to show on a projection screen at meetings.
Meanwhile, on the home front, our own livewire, Bev Masters felt she would like to play with this. She knew that I grumbled about this CD because I did not have Powerpoint on my computer. Remember, if you have links with Education Dept you assume everybody uses this because every school does! Most computers do have the software to show images in a slide format so Bev did some CD copies of it in non-Powerpoint format. Thank you Bev.
She then had another brainstorm. Why not a DVD? Many people these days have a TV and the facilities to record programmes and play DVD’s. Hey Presto a DVD with background music which will play for the TV. I tried and it did work. However, Bev tells me I should have been smarter on the stop and fast-forward buttons because I said it took 45 minutes to play it and I got bored!
So any member can have a CD or DVD for only $5 a pop and watch and see what plants you might like to grow. Some will be in your dreams but they can still be enjoyed and when next you make a trip up the Amazon or on Mexican peaks you can say “That plant is called-----!” What lies ahead? Perhaps talkies with the music!

Hechtia tillandsioides.
This plant has been in Australia for many years and is now widely spread from offsets due its uniqueness in being a virtual spineless Hechtia. It has only just flowered in Adelaide in the collections of Derek Butcher and Len Colgan but is such a quaint plant that one wonders why so little has been written about it. Despite what the species name implies there are spines on the leaves although they are what Margaret calls ‘jelly spines’.
Let us first look at what has been written about this plant. First there is the magnificent painting done for Andre in 1889 as a Bakeria of what appears to be a male plant with a bipinnate inflorescence and shows a bit of artistic licence in the size of the flowers and total colour of the petals. In reality the male petals are white with splashes of dark pink especially towards the tips even though Lyman Smith describes them as just white (for female flowers?). Smith also tells us that the plant flowers less than 1m high with an amply tripinnate inflorescence and is very graceful and delicate.
What does astound me is how taxonomists link the two sexes of a species because as John Utley points out, many seem to have differences in plant habit depending on sex! One can only assume that each of the sexes must be growing in the immediate vicinity so that pollinators can at least find it easy to transfer pollen. AND in these days of man’s intervention in the insect and other wild life populations, it makes you wonder about their survival.
Hechtia tillandsioides was described from a painting and no information was given as to where the plant may have been collected. It is therefore an enigma as to how the taxonomists link it to live (herbarium!) material. There does appear to be other similar finely toothed hechtias found in Mexico. For example we know that in 2004 in the Bromeliaceae of Mexico checklist Adolfo Espejo Serna proposed the resurrection of a Hechtia purpusii and linking it with H. lindmanioides. Smith had treated H. purpusii as a synonym of H. tillandsioides. While we do not know where H. tillandsioides was originally from, we do know that H. lindmanioides comes from Barranca de Consoquitla, Vera Cruz and H. purpusii comes from Barranca de Tenampa, Vera Cruz. Whether this proposal will be accepted by his peers we can only wait and see.
If we look at Smith’s key to Hechtia we see H. lindmanioides at #20 and H. tillandsioides at #21. The main difference being in the size of the flower, said to be 3mm in H. lindmanioides and 5mm in H. tillandsioides whereas our plant is about 7mm. Now, Lyman Smith had treated H. purpusii as a synonym of H. tillandsioides and if you read the original description by Brandegee in 1920 it seems to be the right decision. If you treat H. purpusii as synonymous with H. lindmanioides then the combination of the diagnostic information makes this H. purpusii even closer to H. tillandsioides. I have had to scan my flowers at 1200dots per inch so I can see what these measurements look like! Nothing is written about H. tillandsioides male plants and yet, as John Utley has pointed out, there can be substantial differences between male and female plants!
Why am I telling you this? Well, there is this possibility that our H. tillandsioides is wrongly identified and one easy way to find out identity is to ascertain where the plant was collected.
This leads me on the track of how our H. tillandsioides got to Australia and where it was collected. Only male plants seem to be in Australia although why it was left to South Aussies to pick this up I don’t know! How do we know it is male? Well, it has 6 prominent stamens and oodles of pollen when the flower first opens. When you try to find the stigma lobes in the centre of the flower all you find is a little stub which is no use to man or beast! No wonder it is a frustrated plant and we must find it a mate! Did this plant in Australia start from seed because if so, then there must be a female plant around. Regrettably, I think they are all offsets from the same plant and all roads – so far - lead to John Catlan of Jacob’s Well, Qld. John tells me he got his from Mary Nicholson who almost certainly got hers from Olwen Ferris. It did not appear in any of Olwen’s catalogues that I can trace so it must have been rare in her collection. It is slow to offset and seems to need to form a clump to flower. What we do not know is how often it flowers once a clump has formed and John Catlan has promised to let me know. Because it takes 4-5 years to clump there is much waiting for the plant to flower.
The key points to watch are:
1. Is anyone growing a female plant for my frustrated one?
2. Does anyone know where Olwen may have got her plant? I think it must have been when she was in Queensland because there are no NSW leads.
3. There may be a name change in the offing!

If you look at www.fcbs.org under Hechtia tillandsioides you will see a white petalled plant that is tripinnate and agrees more closely to Smith’s description of the female plant. I wonder if Ken Marks checked for sex! Ken tells me that his plant did not flower and has since been given away so he could not investigate! AND the plant in flower was at the South Florida Show in 2005. It will be too late now for the owner of said plant to check but perhaps there are only females, of note, in Florida!

Aechmea ‘Lalinda’.
In 1994 Len Colgan brought in to a South Australian Society meeting a flowering Aechmea ornata var. nationalis. It was the first time we had seen an Aechmea ornata in flower in South Australia so it was quite an event. The fact that the plant was variegated led us to accept the fact that the flower head was not up to the usual size and standard we expect from Len.
So it was a bit of a surprise when Ivy Kirby telephoned and said she had Aechmea ornata in flower. We do have a plant called A. ornata var. hoehneana which had been around in Australia for the previous 20 years or so and origin was unknown. but which is clearly within that A. gamosepala/cylindrata group. So I had this in mind while nodding my head and agreeing with everything Ivy said. But then she mentioned vivid red, upright, spiky leaves underneath the blue flower head and I realised perhaps I should not have been so patronising. Subsequent phone calls were received mainly for my wife Margaret but mention was still made of the said plant doing its thing.
Finally on December 15th Ivy got fed up with the lack of action of the Secretary and dumped a complete inflorescence on his desk in his DEN just when he was translating the description of Tillandsia tephrophylla from Latin to English. A cockroach jumped out of the inflorescence so papers flew for a short while. Mind you, the inflorescence was post floral, with black bits hanging where the beautiful blue flowers would have been. The long red spiky scape bracts up to 30cm long were still red so it was an impressive 47cm long piece of plant with an 8cm mace on the top!
Ivy had a band-aid on her hand and it was said that her secateurs AND husband Norm were still in the clump of vegetation when she left home. If you have seen Ivy's backyard you'll know what I mean.
So the TRUE Aechmea ornata var. hoehneana is in South Australia, and I assume Australia, for anyone with the space and inclination to grow it. Oh! I forgot to tell you. The leaves can be over 1 metre long and are stiff with a point on the end.
If you have a smallish plant with floppy leaves about 30cm long, a shortish scape with red floppy bracts 5-6cm long, a cone shaped flower head admittedly with blue flowers but with long red floral bracts with a little whisker at the top (mucro) instead of chunky short green bracts with a really long whisker THEN you ain't got the true Aechmea ornata var. hoehneana. Your plant is clearly in the Ortgiesia group.

Meanwhile in 1992 Peter Franklin of Raymond Terrace, had obtained a certain Aechmea lalindei, now growing under his number PAF1259, from Joe Rigby who in turn had got it from Keith Golinski in Queensland. Peter even sent me photos. Here was my bogus Aechmea ornata var. hoehneana !! Peter and I were in agreement that the plant just had to be an Ortgiesia close to A. cylindrata. We knew that Aechmea lalindei was the old name for a male Aechmea mariae-reginae so whoever had identified it as this, was from the ‘old’ school. How the same plant got two names, admittedly both having cone shaped inflorescences and bluish petals, beggars the imagination. However, we must remember that there was little Bromeliad literature to refer to, in those days. Anyway, we convinced Keith Golinski that his plant was one of THOSE Aechmea cylindrata. Aechmea lalindei did not appear in the promotional CD for Bromagic in 1997. It was somewhat in limbo because it was an A. cylindrata with a distinctive shape and our experience has shown that there are more hybrids in this Aechmea sub-genus Ortgiesia than we had at first realised. We feel that the name ‘Lalinda’ should be preserved as a Cultivar name.

Vriesea hybrids, where leaves are it !
50 years ago the English thought it a great idea that Cultivated plants needed their own set of rules for naming purposes. After all, plants found in the wild could be described and named as long as the ICBN rules were followed. Here we have lumpers and splitters and at species level it is usually the lumpers that follow the splitters rather than vice versa!

There was nothing for cultivated plants and naming generally followed the botanist rules. Clearly something had to be done. So some 50 years ago a few botanists attached to Botanical Gardens in the UK felt there was a need for a set of rules. There had been attempts by prominent botanists to have a separate system over the previous 100 years but nobody was willing to change words into action! And so the ICNCP rules (International code of Nomenclature of Cultivated Plants) came into existence.

The real shake-up came in 1995 where the grex concept was dropped for all plants except Orchids and individual naming of clones became vogue. With this happening we now have a problem of lumpers and splitters but, with cultivars, once a name is given you can’t lump it later on. So you must make your one decision count. The use of grex at F1 level was a good one because if the parents were truly species then the progeny would look roughly alike! Under the new concept these lookalikes can be treated as a cultivar. Are you a lumper or a splitter? When you get to the next level F2 you are dealing with hybrids crossed with species and you will not have many look alikes. However you will have a favourite in the bunch and this is where you should be concentrating your propagating efforts.

Since the mid 1990’s there has been an upsurge in the interest in Vrieseas with wriggly lined leaves. The many forms of the so called ‘Red Chestnut’ is one example.

If you can get a chance to surf the internet I suggest you visit the Bromeliad Society International Web site www.BSI.org and access Cultivar corner to get into the Cultivar database. Enter Vriesea and under hybridist enter ‘Shiigi’, look at all the photos linked to his 32 cultivars and then ask yourself whether you can remember the ‘differences’. Now enter ‘Arden’ under hybridist and look at the photos of the plants with wriggly lined leaves. Notice the plants are in flower and are different enough for you to remember them. Now enter ‘Maloy’ and you will see ‘Shiigi’ type plants but at least linked by the name ‘Kiwi’.
You can now see the interpretations of ‘differences’ from a hybridist/grower point of view. As Registrar I cannot make judgements, only recommendations, but in 1985 a different Registrar (not me!) for the BSI charged US$10.00 for registrations where 2 or more names were lodged showing the same parents. Nothing was charged for one cultivar name. In other words he was encouraging culling.

For a plant to be called a cultivar it must be in general cultivation and not just one plant. It would not be worth listing otherwise! For a plant to be called a cultivar it must be ‘stable’ and grown for some years. In England, for example, there are many trials held by Registration bodies on annuals. This is easy and can even equate with say neoregelias which you can flower in say 3 years from seed. But what about the vrieseas with wriggles or squiggles on the leaves? These take say 10 years to flower and are shy with offsets so you would have to be young to start with! The only other option is to meristem. This is further complicated by the fact that these plants change leaf colour and markings as they mature. At least that is my experience with the ‘Red Chestnut’ I have grown over the years.

This problem is not just with the intentional hybridist. Let us say you grow seed from the seedbank as ‘Red Chestnut’ you may not be growing ‘Red Chestnut’ but a variant of Vriesea fosteriana so you must watch your seedlings.You may even get a really outstanding seedling worthy of a cultivar name.

I believe that there is an onus on all seed growers to do the right thing and identify their plants. The most oft question asked by a newcomer to Bromeliads, even before “How do I grow this?” is “What is its name?”. If you do not have a Register to refer to, you cannot give a proper answer.
1. You can take the easy way out and sell your plants with just ‘Bromeliad’ on the label
2. You can give names to your plants without advising anybody. You can even do what they do on Ebay and change the name to a new name because “a new name sells!”
3. You can do nothing and just complain about others ‘doing the wrong thing’
4. You can try to address the problem and from a Registrar’s point of view look for truly unique plants if you want a separate name. All I need is a Registration form and a photograph of a mature plant.

Under the Cultivar rules there is a category called ‘Cultivar Group’ that takes the place of grex and covers all named cultivars that look very similar but have different parents. For example ‘Tea Rose’ for a special sort of Rose. I feel all these seed raised vrieseas with wriggly lines on their leaves (grown in the hope they will not flower!!!) need a Cultivar Group name. I couldn’t call them ‘Wrigglies’ could I? Thanks to Helga Tarver, my friendly ferret in Florida we decided on Glyph which means amongst other things an ornamental channel! So now if you go to the on-line Bromeliad Cultivar Register you enter ‘Glyph’ in the Cultivar Group area you will get a list of these types of vrieseas.
Some of these are already in Adelaide but you will need to ask around. We also know that John Buchanan of Wardell, in northern NSW was hybridising in this area and since his death his nursery has been acquired by a primarily orchid grower. I am hoping these will be properly named before the inevitable release to the ‘public’ but I am not overly optimistic.