"Beware your sins will find you out even though it may take 12 years! Recently I received an email from Lisa Vinzant in Hawaii advising that the plant we are growing in Australia as ‘The Rose’ is really ‘Lokelani’. The problem stems from Shane Zaghini’s book ‘Bromeliads – A Guide to the beautiful Neoregelia’ 1994 page 11 where a plant was given the name ‘The Rose’ and origin unknown. The Cultivar Registrar, Don Beadle, accepted this information as being fact.

In 1994 at the World Bromeliad Conference, Bob Okazaki donated a ‘Lokelani’ for the special auction and ever since then the plant has been known by this name in the USA. It would appear that someone from Australia visiting Bob just before 1994 brought an offset back to Australia with the thought that this plant was being called ‘A Rose’ which is what the Hawaiian ‘Loke’ means. This intrigues me a bit because the Rose is not native to Hawaii!

So if you are growing ‘The Rose’ I suggest you change the name to ‘Lokelani’. If there is a moral to this story it is to register your own hybrids yourself and not wait for others to try to clean up your mess at a later date."