Coming Events.
March 11th Summer Brag.
March 17th-18th ANNUAL SHOW.
April 1st Bus trip to Bute.
May 6th Meanings of Latin Bromeliad names.

January meeting from the Secretary’s desk.
Len Colgan promised to be quick in discussing ‘other plants’ brought in because there were several tables full of ‘Glyph’ plants. First was George’s Vriesea rubra which wasn’t. The true V. rubra has to be living north of Cairns to be really happy. George was just being lazy because it was either Vriesea alborubrobracteata or a hybrid of it called ‘Elan’. They are very difficult to tell apart. To think that George could save writing one letter by calling his plant ‘Elan’ which is closer to the truth than ‘Rubra’. So everyone – a bit of peer pressure on George.
The Largs Bay Bragger brought in a photo printout of his successful flowering of Pitcairnia burle-marxii. No photo from the Bute Bragger who had previously rang me about his success too. I am sure others bought a plant from Mick Romanowski at our March Show proving that this species will survive Adelaide winters but are the shy quiet type. We will see how this plant manages though our drought stricken Summer. Regrettably we can’t say that this plant is water wise!
Due to my stirring, George brought in Vriesea ‘Main Roads’ to show you can get a white stripe down the centre of the leaves when you try.
I am sure someone brought in Vriesea ‘Ro Ro’ because Peter Huddy was around. Anyway, here is an example of why you should register names of the better looking hybrids so that others can refer to official records. No registration and the history of the plant dies with the owner! Here we had a variegated plant under the name of its parents wandering around the USA (and Australia) for some 30 years with nobody bothering about it and leaving it to someone else. Peter bit the bullet and named it after a well loved daughter!
Adam’s guzmanias were there showing how they can hold their colour for months.
One of the few Racinaea that has a spectacular flower and can grow in Adelaide is R. fraseri that can always be identified because the flowers always point to the skies – no droopiness for them. Anyway, Corky seems to be able to succeeed with this plant AND he does not have to revert to his famous pot culture.
I think that Len Colgan agreed he had been ‘conned’ regarding his T. concolor plant from Victoria and will forever have ‘Conned’ on the label. Note the capital ‘C’!
I was rather intrigued about his amber coloured, scented, T. streptocarpa he had brought in. Certainly not a range of colours you expect for this species.
We learnt about a supposed unidentified Tillandsia that Len called ‘Oregon’ because Mark Dimmitt called it thus. It already has an identity - ‘Oregon’ - and all I need is a photo of the plant in flower for its origins to be recorded.

Vriesea with hieroglyphs
Bill Treloar had volunteered to be my ‘straight man’ in the presentation.
Why do some vrieseas have ‘funny’ markings on the leaves? If we followed Von Daniken we could believe they are writings from outer space and we should be able to decypher them. We know these vrieseas come from shady areas in the jungle but do these markings give them an evolutionary edge? Surely totally green leaves are better.
Is there a standard for these markings? There were no Von Danikens present so we were without an answer. The markings on the leaves of V. splendens was ruled as not quite getting there. It was interesting that these hieroglyph markings are not only on plants in Brazilian jungles but on V. ospinae which comes from Colombia showing they have evolved under different conditions. I always think of the Colombian vriesea with their small flowers somewhat apart from the larger flowers of the Brazilians.
Margaret has been through the list of vrieseas and had come up with 25 species that could fit the bill. Only 7 are in general cultivation, namely, fenestralis, fosteriana, gigantea, glutinosa, hieroglyphica, ospinae and platynema.
Generally speaking these plants are frugal with their offsets so if you want a lot of plants you have to rely on seed raised plants. These plants are grown for their leaves which is a good thing because they take such a long while to flower. If you have a seedling this can be 8 to 10 years. Some like V. glutinosa produce grass-like offsets and if they do it pays to remove these when they are about 5 cm long and treat them as seedlings. This means you are only 2 to 3 years behind the parent plant. We had a sizeable plant on display only 5 years old from one of those offsets. The afore-mentioned 7 species were on display including V. hieroglyphica in flower at about 10 years old.
I am sure someone asked about V. gigantea var seideliana to get me to let off steam! You see, in the 1970’s there was a plant that had more white than green in its leaves and was called V. ‘Nova’ that Kent’s catalogue had correctly as a synonym of V. gigantea. But ‘Nova’ was easier to write and the name persisted. At about the same time Lyman Smith had changed the name of the species from V. tessellata to V. gigantea which of course the Americans accepted straight away. The Europeans stubbornly used V. tessellata and Aussies, for a while, went 50/50 hedging their bets! None of the taxonomists saw any need to formally describe this whiter leaved form and there it stayed as the cultivar ‘Nova’. In 1992, some 25 years later a German by the name of Roeth ( George Rudolph helped me out with this pronunciation) described var. seideliana. Regrettably plants named under the ICBN rules always have priority over Cultivar names. However, even after a further 14 years the Americans and some Australians want to hang on to the ‘Nova’ concept. To think there is even a ‘Green Nova’!
Perhaps the most striking markings are those on V. hieroglyphica and as Peter Huddy pointed out at the meeting these are mainly lost in hybridisation. I was only able to find 2 out of 21 recorded where the heiroglyphic markings had been more or less retained. V. fosteriana being easily the most favoured in hybridisation.

Certainly hybrids play a large role in the availability of these sorts of plants. Sometimes they are a watered down substitute regarding leaf markings and sometimes there is a bonus of a more colourful flower spike. Sometimes they are really outstanding. If you look up the Cultivar register on the Internet you should come across some 117 names. The first one of importance was ‘Red Chestnut’ whose origin is shrouded in mystery although it could well be a natural form of the very variable V. fosteriana. It does not appear to be a hybrid. ‘Red Chestnut’ is also very variable and Margaret and I (and no doubt many others) have seen large batches grown by John Catlan in Qld and Maurie Kellett in Victoria which brings out the oh’s and the ah’s. Needless to say we have bought one or two plants that we considered really outstanding BUT as these plants aged the markings and base colour changed! A nightmare for the Bromeliad Cultivar Registrar because all registered cultivars are supposed to be stable and these variants were being given cultivar names. This is the main reason why I conjured up the word ‘Glyph’ Cultivar Group to cover this certain type of Vriesea that had hieroglyphic markings on their leaves.
At the turn of the 20th century hyridists reported a lack in retaining hieroglyph markings in their hybrids but they could have been using different forms AND we know that ‘Red Chestnut’ was not around at that time. At about this time ‘Intermedia’ came into existence but must have died off because the plant we see under this name is the one created in the 1930’s. This was a cross using V. hieroglyphica and the density of the leaf markings had been greatly reduced. We had an example of this hybrid on display. It does have a spectular branched inflorescence.
Things were relaively quiet until the 1980’s when Shiigi and others in Hawaii saw great possibilities in the landscape plant market with these hybrids and even registered some of them. Lou Forrest in NSW did similar work but registered nothing! Since his death several have been named including ‘Erotica’. In the late 1980’s John Catlan in Qld was dabbling but found nothing startling at F1 level (species crossed species). ‘Squiggles’ is one example where we registered a few on his behalf.
In the late 1990’s things went really mad in New Zealand. In the North Island you have ideal conditions for this sort of plant as a landscape plant. Please please don’t try it as this in South Australia. I showed one example of a plant getting too close to the shade cloth. The Kiwis found the same as the Hawaiians that F2 generations involving ‘Red Chestnut’ gave some marvellous unstable colours to their plants. This coincided with an upsurge in interest in Bromeliads in New Zealand which meant that demand exceeded supply and thus prices rose astronomically. I at least got the Kiwis to use the word Kiwi or Tasman as the first part of the cultivar name to differentiate them from the Hawaiian plants.
Things were also moving in Queensland where John Catlan found that whereas platynema x ‘Red Chestnut’ only gave some difference to the parents, when ‘Red Chestnut’ was again introduced startling colours appeared. This matter has still to be resolved. It was not that long ago when I came across ‘Hawaiian Babies’ in Sydney which had me grumbling about the Hawaiians again. But guess who the culprit was - John Catlan!
Growing these sorts of vrieseas can be great fun but you will need patience, space and remember SHADE. Fertiliser can well be used if you have lots of space and don’t want to bring plants to a meeting. Fertiliser at the wrong plant growth cycle can produce elongations in the markings as evidenced by the frontispiece on Andrew Steen’s Bromeliad book. You can expect the leaf markings to change as your plant grows older so take care you do not buy too many of the same sort that have different cultivar names!

Extra Extra
I did think we had some observant fellows in Adelaide but if there are, they failed to mention to me the hidden hieroglyphs that are in many green leaved vrieseas. If you happen to be passing by a Vriesea in your garden hold it up to the light and try to look through the leaf. I saw hieroglyphs, did you?
This all started with me explaining to a Brazilian that her photo was not Vriesea carinata but probably a hybrid like ‘Mariae’. If she had taken the photo in the wild and not in a hotel room I may have had a different answer! Anyway, I looked at fcbs.org photo file and there was Vriesea ‘Mariae’ with hieroglyph leaves. Knowing the alleged parents I had a quick retake! Accusatory Emails flashed around the world! Apparently, in strong Florida sunshine this sometimes happens to this cultivar. I did not say what strong Adelaide sunshine would do to my Vriesea ‘Mariae’ but that is another problem!

February meeting from the Secretary’s desk

The Annual General Meeting did not see many changes in the working personnel but to remind you these will be the ones to see you through to 2008. Peter Hall ‘volunteered’ to be Returning Officer.
PRESIDENT = Len Colgan. VICE PRESIDENT = Adam Bodzioch.
SECRETARY = Derek Butcher TREASURER = Bill Treloar
COMMITTEE = Margaret Butcher, Len Cork, Maureen Hick, Colin Waterman, David Wecker
AUDITORS = Keith Bradtberg and Adam Bodzioch
ASSISTANT SECRETARY = Margaret Butcher
LIBRARIAN = Andrew Rawlinson
AFTERNOON TEA CONVENOR = Bev Masters
DOOR TICKETS = George Rudolph
RAFFLE TICKETS = George Rudolph and other helpers on the day.
TRADING TABLE CONVENOR = Maureen Hick.
HOST & HOSTESS = Colin Waterman and Eileen Mullins.
POTS & LABELS = David Wecker.
NAME TAG MAKERS = Ron and Bev Masters.
EDITOR = Derek Butcher.

We did discuss the offset that Bob MacGregor had brought in for the Raffle if only to prepare whoever won it how it should be treated. It is alleged to be carnivorous in the way it can snare birds and deter cats. It also needs to be in a tub because it will quickly take over your garden if planted directly in soil. This plant has been known in Australia for years as Bromelia balansae although Harry Luther doubts this. Our plant is NOT BIG ENOUGH. Anyone who has been to Cairns will know that a small section of one of their main roads is a line of these plants which when in flower turns the heads of motorists passing by. The leaves are a magnificent red with the inflorescence a column of violet flowers. The Cairns Society are either too chicken or not interested in plant identity because I am forever asking them pertinent questions about these plants or even close-up photos of the flowers.

Click for larger image in new screen.

Garden Clubs of Australia Magazine had been received and made available to interested parties. This time Bromeliads got a mention in the form of a Tillandsia rauhii that had flowered in Sydney in the collection of Jarka and Nina Rehak after many years wait. This is a large Tillandsia with green leaves which Nina says makes a nice large green urn in your garden for years. The inflorescence, if it stood up straight, would be about 2m high but always gets a lean. The flowers are not particularly colourful but they make up for that with persistency. In fact the Rehak plant has been putting out flowers for the last 2 years and is now showing the effects of such fecundity. The flowers that opened 2 years ago are now producing ripe seed and Nina tells me you have to really poke around to find seed. The problem with seeds from Tillandsia is that it is difficult to know when they are their most viable. Oft is the time when you get there too late. Anyway Nina sent some seed for us in South Australia to try. Perhaps her thoughts were that if it grows in Adelaide it should grow anywhere else! Anyway I had 6 packets to hand out. I had thought that the younger ones would have been interested in ‘giving them a go’ but older ones also rolled up. I planted mine 7 days before the meeting and even now I am getting germination. So they are viable. I will not start bragging yet because I know that getting germination is easy – you just have to wait a year to see if you are really making progress and your seedlings have not disappeared. How many will be bragging in 2008?

This leads us to the plants brought in for display where Len Colgan did the honors. Margaret Tainsh brought in a plant for identification and she now knows that her plant is called Nidularium ‘Miranda’ which is a variegated sport of ‘Madonna’. Many years ago now, the Rehak’s plant showed variegation and after careful selection of successive offsets obtained a fairly stable variegate plant that they called ‘Miranda’ after the suburb they live in, in the outskirts of Sydney. It is not a small plant and grows to about 1.2m diam. even under Adelaide conditions. It has nice soft leaves so is friendly. It starts flowering with almost white primary bracts and as the inflorescence rises from the centre it becomes redder. Petals are white. This flowering lasts for months and is a bewdy!
Dave Wecker got in early with his bragging (that’s March meeting!) with a Nidularium campos-portoi which had flowered and given 5 offsets (I think). Anyway, he was talking about letting Bill Treloar have one ‘FREE’ because this plant does not like living in Bute.
And now to the ‘Piece de Resistance’ that Len Cork had brought in but left the label at home on the table. It was flowering and had taken him 15 years to do so. The story goes that he was given an offset of a very rare non flowering hybrid by Len Colgan who set him this challenge. We all agreed that it was flowering. Now for the interesting bit. Len Colgan tells us the plant was Aechmea ‘Red Flamingo’ which I did not realise was even in Adelaide. It must be 2 years ago when there was heated discussion between Cairns, Brisbane and Sydney. As Lynn Hudson pointed out plants called Aechmea ‘Red Flamingo’ should look like an Aechmea warasii because it is an old Hummel hybrid. Yamamoto’s hybrid of fendleri x chantinii was registered in 1979 as just Aechmea ‘Flamingo’ and with a bit of detective work I was able to find out the following.
There have been two different plants, but each called ‘Red Flamingo’, circulating in the 1970's and 1980's. First it was captured from a Nurserymans catalogue as 'Red Flamingo' (Yamamoto) in Smith's Manuscript 1984. In the Prelim List 1991 'Red Flamingo' appears as being by Hummel with links to an A. warasii hybrid. In the 1980's a plant called A. 'Red Flamingo' was imported to Australia from the USA but it is clearly Yamamoto's 'Flamingo' (fendleri x chantinii). You will see under 'Flamingo' that although this hybrid was done in 1964 it was not registered until 1979 which is the possible cause of it having two names. It has no link to Hummel's 'Red Flamingo' and the 'Red' should be deleted. No photograph is held of Hummel's 'Red Flamingo'.
So Corky, when you get home and find the errant label please cross out the ‘Red’. This is all the more important if it gets offsets and these get passed on.

As usual there were several tillandsias to talk about. One plant Len had that he had got from Peter Tristram was interesting and seems to be a natural species so that when it flowers we may be able to identify it. Of especial interest was a hybrid that Mark Dimmitt had done between Tillandsia duratii and T. stricta. It was not an improvement on either and may not even show its petals. In all, an oddity that if it had occurred in the wild would die out. Even if T. duratii and T. stricta did share the same locality there are many natural barriers to prevent cross pollination. The aim seems to be that the first priority is to conserve the gene bank for the species.
I was recently reading a paper by Tania Wendt and others on why they decided that Pitcairnia corcovadensis was not a variety of P. flammea. Pitcairnia flammea is one of the easier Pitcairnia to grow in Adelaide because it does not need the moisture that so many Pitcairnia crave. Anyway, near Rio de Janeiro Pitcairnia corcovadensis grows side by side and within the area of P. flammea BUT in the wild they never hybridise and yet they can be hybridised by man (or woman). They did numerous experiments but could not find out why. So close proximity is not always the key to compatability. Bromeliad evolution leads me to make comment because it leads into Bill Treloars talk on plants that prefer to clump before flowering.
Bromeliads seek to set seed as a priority. Depending on their habitat they may decide to put all their energies into this one seed production effort. We have already seen how Tillandsia rauhii copes. It keeps on producing seed over a 2-3 years period in the hope that sufficient rain will come so that at least one batch will grow on. Wasteful? May be, but the species does survive! Other species have a shorter flowering period but produce offsets which can use up the dying mother’s energy for its own use to flower again and earlier. A seedling does not have this advantage and must start from scratch. Other species put out offsets before the flowering cycle starts which has the advantage in times of drought to conserve moisture en masse. But if more rain than usual falls, rotting occurs.
So there are many strategies that are used. Some win, some lose.
We will now look at Bill’s talk and see how we can use this knowledge in growing our plants horticulturally. Sometimes it may be better to remove offsets early but some cases of early removal can mean delayed or even non-flowering.
Some plants were on display and others Bill just mentioned such as Portea petropolitana and Quesnelia quesneliana which seemed to prefer offsetting before flowering. Bill also mentioned Aechmea guaraparaensis which must not be confused with A. guaratubensis.
Many of these clumpers are terrestrial plants such as the Deuterocohnia brevifolia ssp. chlorantha, so much so that the clump brought in was 30cm diam and not a sign of a flower. It was just a large prickly cushion of small plants. The same strategy was seen in the Hechtia tillandsioides (male and still waiting for a partner) and the Dyckia ‘Warren’F2. Ever since I have been Bromeliad Cultivar Registrar I have never used F2 because it is difficult to define. It means self set seed but only if it has been deliberately self set by man’s intervention. If the seed was just collected from the mother plant then the pollen parent is unknown and the plant should be known as ‘Warren’ x ?. BUT never as just ‘Warren’. Did you know that the original ‘Warren’ was named after Bill Baker’s father in California? Did you know that ‘Warren’ has a little bit from the species in alphabetical order dawsonii, fosteriana, marnier-lapostolle, and platyphylla? Each in their own right very attractive and distinctive species. Any seed from ‘Warren’ would give a variation nobody could segregate. The growing of such plants seems money driven rather than conservation driven in view of the number and prices of plants incorrectly identified as ‘Warren’ in the Sydney area seems to indicate.

Neoregelia ampullacea loves to clump and should be allowed to do so and the same applies to its hybrids. We should also include other small offsetting Neoregelia such as N. abendrothae. Tillandsia utriculata ssp pringlei just loves to clump, in complete contrast to a straight T. utriculata which would shudder just to produce one offset. I digress. Here it was said that you can get flowers sooner if you split up the clump to singles. This may be so but there is no-one in the wild to help the plant in this manner. I prefer to let nature take its course because one of the myriad offsets will eventually make up its mind to take over and flower. This is clearly a case of water conservation. The same applies to many of the Tillandsia from the Bolivian highlands that multiply profusely even at early seedling stage.
We cannot guess why T. esseriana should clump but then we do not know the weather patterns in an isolated area in Paraguay not known for its tillandsias!
We can guess with T. marconae which comes from the desert in Northern Chile and gets its moisture from morning fogs that roll in when El Nino is doing its thing. Thus, clumping would help conserve moisture. This particular plant has an interesting story and was the basis of a flurry of emails when I flowered it. Yes, it has flowered as all witnessed the event. This plant had been obtained by Len Colgan from Walter Till some years ago and the plant offsetted and offsetted and offsets were spread around Australia including my backyard. Len grumbled so much to Walter that Walter got him an offset that he guaranteed would flower. In June 2006 I put the plant in a large plastic bag for a week with a ripe apple. I thought everybody knew about this ‘scientific’ method of releasing something like Ethylene gas which prompts Bromeliads to flower but alas there were members present who seemed stunned at the idea. It doesn’t always work but it is good fun trying if you have been waiting 10 years for a plant to flower! (As an aside, perhaps Gloria threw some orange peel into Len Cork’s Aechmea ‘Flamingo’ during winter, when he wasn’t looking!) When it did flower I just had to brag and tell Walter Till that his non-flowering T. marconae did flower under my care but told him nothing about about the apple. Meanwhile, Len was having kittens and I don’t mean the Burmese sort. All things are now back to normal. Walter Till has a great interest in this plant because he named it in 1985 and for a short time Harry Luther considered it to be a T. paleacea but then changed his mind. I think all of us agreed with Bill that he could not see much T. paleacea in it.
There are several Vriesea hybrids that offset and offset before the oldest plant decides to flower, which is frustrating because it is not expected. One such is ‘Jeanie’s Feather’. This has an interesting history because it came to us from Queensland as ‘Jeanie Arden’ and when I challenged John Arden about it he soon put me back in my box. It had nothing to do with him. This is how it got the name ‘Jeanies Feather’. I told the Queenslanders what we had done but I wonder how many ‘Jeanie Arden’ labels there are around!
Consensus was mixed as to whether you grow Tillandsia cyanea as a clump or not. Does clumping help the plant to decide it must flower? We do know that 20 years ago the clone ALL of us grew, loved to offset, never to flower. Most of us were convinced to compost the plant and try another clone!
Finally there was this clump of Tillandsia laticornua which I have had for some 15 years before some of the plants decided to try to flower without the aid of the apple-in-the-bag-trick! This species name is a madeup name and if it does actually flower I may be able to find out if it is a species or a hybrid!