I thought, if I start a thread on Vrieseas, then it might help people with Identification. Maybe we could do it for the other Genera too?
If you have a pic of a NAMED vriesea, feel free to add it! I hope this thread is useful to anyone looking for ID's
Vriesea fenestralis
Vriesea guttata in flower, early summer
Vriesea rubyae, fading flower, early summer
I don't grow a whole lot of Vrieseas, but this is one of my faves of those I have:
V. "Pink Cockatoo"
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v466/Bihai/DSCN2894.jpg
Is there a trick to getting them to rebloom? I bought one 2 years ago in bloom and it hasn't bloomed since. I have a green thumb but not with these it seems. My guess is it needs more light, it definitely gets enough food.
It won't bloom again Tommy. Didn't it produce any pups? Usually after the bloom dies out they produce pups and the mother plant dies out.
weed_woman or gothqueen could tell you more than I can but I did learn that much about them.
Thanks for the info. Too bad.....
It should have produced some pups and then you cut the pups from the mother plant and then you have a new plant to start over again., and keep up the cycle. each time it blooms and then produces the pups you start over again.I have no idea of what to tell you if no pups produced.
You don't have to cut the pups from the mother plant. The longer you leave pups attached to a mother plant, the better. The declining adult plant gives energy to the pups. It's completely unnecessary to remove pups at all, unless you plan to plant them elsewhere, sell or trade or gift them to someone, or unless the look of the dying mother just bothers you. You should never remove a pup from a mother until the pup is at LEAST 1/3 the size of the mother, preferably it should be 1/2 the size or MORE.
A single bromeliad is a container, if its a large growing species, can be striking,
A single smaller growing bromeliad in a container can look very lonely.
Its better to let them grow into specimen clumps.
This is a miniature called Neoregelia ampullacea. It has completely left the pot and is going off everywhere (sorry weedwoman, its not a Vreisea, which is the subject of this thread, but its to illustrate a point)
If i cut off every pup and potted it separately, I'd have a lot of pots with one small 4-5" plant. This is much more visually interesting
I'll buy and try another one. It's part of the gardening learning process!
I will master this plant!
This is one of my favorite broms and it happens to be a vriesea. It is v. hieroglifica.
Very nice Dawn, I love V. heiroglyphica too! I have just sown some seeds for them, which a lovely lady kindly donated to me. She told me to expect germination in around 3 weeks, but apparently they are very slow to grow! Luckily, I'm not in a rush! LOL
Hi Tommy, flower and Goth, re the discussion on pup removal. Goth is right about them being quite spectacular in a clump, especially if they are a small variety. I guess i like to seperate and grow them on individually as i give them as gifts and try them in different areas of the garden, mostly to learn which areas they do best in. I also find they grow faster when they have more room in the pot, but definitely are more spectacular when a bunch of plants are flowering all at once. This is my friends garden, and You can see a bunch of Vrieseas in the back that started as one plant, grew three pups the next year, then grew about 5 pups on each of those three over the next couple of years. They are in full sun, in a hot subtropical climate, next to a salt water pool! The pot is tiny (4-5") but the plant doesn't seem to mind, and will be devided this year into about 3 clumps all to go back in the garden! I would have pulled this apart ages ago, if it were mine, but then wouldn't have seen this spectacular display!
Anyway Tommy, I hope you can find yourself a new plant and get a better result with it than the last.
Sue
I will have to say they are very pretty when grown in the clump fashion . I think I would seperate too until I got enough to let them clump up like that.
Not a good picture but here is Vriesea Splenriet
This message was edited Dec 21, 2008 11:08 PM
This picture may be a little better.
They are good pics Fleurone! I noticed there is not much difference between V. 'Splenreit' and V. splendens, in fact, I can't see any difference, (using only net pictures http://fcbs.org/pictures.htm ) other than the flower/spear being alot redder on V. 'Splenreit' than on V. splendens. Hey Goth. Are you there? Can you enlighten us?
Thanks Sue, that is a great site, I am sure I will be spending a fair bit of time there!..
The only difference I know of between those 2 is that SPLENDENS is the species plant, and SPLENREIT is a cultivar of SPLENDENS.
Apparently someone somewhere sometime thought that there was enough difference between them to make that distinction, but frankly I have never been able to tell them apart either
Oh goody, it's not just me then! Whew!
Yes Fleurone, that is the best site for trying to ID plants, but it takes alot of time to go through all the pics. It gets a bit easier if you know the Genus to start with!
Vriesea flammea. Its quite a small, hardy bromeliad, and will pup up very quickly, to make a good ground cover. Apparently it is also a good climber.
The V. flammea flower (sorry it's not totally in focus)
