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Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Introduction to Bromileads

Back in 2015, I met a guy called Andreas who’s a keen gardener like me and we quickly became good friends. Shortly after I met him I found out he was planning to shift house and he was doing it all on his own so Marie and I took pity on him and offered to give him a hand, which he greatly appreciated.

We quickly found out just how much he loved his garden when we saw his amazing collection of plants, many of which he was storing in an empty in-ground swimming pool. He had all kinds of palms, cycads, not to mention a huge variety of other rare tropical plants including a huge collection of Bromileads. When he started rattling off all their botanical names we soon realised the depth of his obsession. He’s a collector at heart and he has an impressive ability to retain information about the things he collects.

It turns out he had way too many plants to take with him so out of appreciation for our help he kindly gave us a whole bunch of plants, including a few palms and a number of bromileads. I’d never ventured into the world of Bromileads until then, but I have always liked the effect they create in tropical gardens.



One thing I’ve discovered about them is that they multiply over time, occasionally 'throwing pups' as Andreas calls it, before the parent (or host plant) dies off. So in the few short years since he first gave us some, we now have quite a number of them dotted around our property, wherever there’s space.

I recently established a new garden by our front gate and decided that that would be a good place to put some of them. As it happens, all the ones I selected for this garden all love the full sun which is exactly what they get in this particular spot (pictured below). But not all of them like full sun. Some prefer the shade, like the 2 pictured above named “Grace’s Avalanche” & “Dark Knight” — don't ask me to repeat the botannical name he told us as I’ve completely forgotten that. The green one on the right in the pic below will apparently grow to a massive size, so I’ve left a bit of space around it in anticipation.

Some of them have a serrated edge on the leaves and are quite sharp and prickly, others are quite smooth and safe to handle. The one pictured below is my favourite. It has a red tip on the end of each leaf and before the host dies off it sends up an impressive red snake-like flower stem that adds a interesting focal point to this part of the garden.

This particular plant will need attention soon as there are about four host plants in the one pot that are all about to die and each one will have thrown a few pups which will need to be split up and re-potted.

As I’ve discovered, there are so many different kinds of Bromileads each with their own characteristics and habits. I’ll discuss more about bromeliads in another post later including the ones I’ve earmarked for the tropical shade garden next to the sleepout.




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