MONTHLY RAFFLE PRIZE ROSTER:
- April - Jim Clague, Jørgen Jakobsen, Les Thain, Fred Mirande
- May - Laurie Dorfer, Edwina Caruana, Eileen Killingley, Suzanne Burrows
- June - Freda Kennedy, Maureen Wheeler, Sharyn Baraldi, Jim Beverstock
- July - Max Williams, Mary Bennis, Doreen Netting, Noel Kennon
- August - Neville Wood, Melissa Talbot, Lydia Chinnock, Rhonda Grant
- October - Beth Clague, Barbara Jones-Beverstock, Ted Clare, Steve Wain
- November - Noel Kennon, Michael Drury, Deniece Crutchley, Maadi McKenna
- February 2018 - Fred Burrows, Monica De Clouett, Meri Stefanidakis, Maria Jakobsen

MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL:
Fees are due and payable by June 30th and, hopefully, to make it more convenient for our members who do not attend meetings on a regular basis, we have arranged for a direct transfer system to make payment. Our bank details are:
Illawarra Credit Union; BSB Number 802249; Account Number 249 039 602.

GENERAL MEETING - Saturday April 1st – “My Garden” by Lydia Chinnock:
Members of the Illawarra Bromeliad Society Inc. have been impressed by the consistently high quality of plants that Lydia entered in the show competitions last year and in the monthly competitions for the last two or three years. Her efforts in growing top quality plants have been rewarded by winning the Dulcie Doonan Memorial Award for the best entry containing a cryptanthus plant in the Artistic Category at the Show, and also winning the Open Points Score Award for 2016.
She and Ian moved into a new home in Brooks Reach, Horsley some three years ago and were immediately faced with a building site. Not only did they rehabilitate the site but they turned it into a show garden, reflecting her artistic flare and comprising a series of balanced areas. Few members have had the pleasure of visiting this new garden which will be on the Visits Program for 2018. In the meantime, at the April meeting, Lydia, with assistance from Ian, will be presenting a series of photographs showing off their horticultural achievements during the last three years.

WORKSHOP - APRIL 22:
The first workshop of the year will be held at John and Rita Toolan’ lovely property at 5 Rondanella Drive, Kanahooka (4261 1773) which will feature: 1) taking pups and potting up; and 2) mounting tillandsias. Members who would like to learn how to pot, please bring a pot and some potting mix; we will provide the plant, the fertiliser and the name tag. For members who would like to learn how to mount a tillandsia please bring a plant and something to mount it on. While this is a workshop especially for novice growers--with Neville, Graham, Ann and Noel there to provide advice and help--all members are welcome.
This will kick off at 10 am with morning tea and for lunch John will do a sausage sizzle, with bread and sauce also provided, but it would be appreciated if you could bring salads, and cakes or slices to share. We will finish around 2 pm.

GENERAL MEETING – Saturday May 6th – “How to Grow Tillandsias” by Laurie Dorfer
Laurie Dorfer is well known in our Society for his skills in growing superb bromeliads, particularly tillandsias. This talk will be an introduction to tillandsias and how they are distinguished from other bromeliads. He will go on to describe where they come from and the many species varieties and hybrids. The talk will conclude with considerations about how they can be grown. Laurie will have various plants to illustrate features of the talk.

GARDEN VISITS – MAY 20:
The first round of garden visits for 2017 was very successful with 35 participants. For the second round of visits we will start at 10 am at the Berkeley home of President Barbara Jones-Beverstock where we will have morning tea. Contributions of cake or slice will be welcome. We then move on to Neville Wood’s at Shellharbour where he will have a selection of plants for sale—nothing over $10. Please bring a bag or box. Finally we will move south to Kiama and Rhonda Patterson’s where we will have lunch [BYO]. Rhonda will provide tea and coffee but cake and slice to share will be appreciated. More details available closer to the event.

GENERAL MEETING – Saturday, June 3: “What Judges Look For” by Edwina Caruana and Laurie Dorfer:
As most members know, Edwina and Laurie are both members of our Society, are both accredited bromeliad judges and both have judged the competitions in our Annual Show in recent years. To most members the way in which judges go about selecting the winning plants in each competition is a mystery and, consequently, they are uncertain about how to address those features that the judges specifically look for. This presentation has been designed to help our members look at their plants through the judges’ eyes and so give themselves a better chance of presenting award-winning plants.

GENERAL MEETING – Saturday July 1:
It is now a tradition of the Society that the July meeting is a social function of some kind. In the past we have enjoyed “Christmas in July” and “Soup n’ Sweets”. The function for this year has yet to be decided by the Committee but rest assured it will be as enjoyable as ever. Your entertainment for the day will be a power point report on the Sunnybroms Conference being held over 4 days at the end of March/beginning of April at Caloundra, Queensland where twelve of our members are registered to attend.

WORKSHOP #2 – Saturday, July 15:
This workshop, to be held at the home of Lorraine and Fred Mirande, will concern the preparation of entries for the Artistic Section of the Annual Show. The tutor will be Elizabeth Bevan and details of the session will be circulated closer to the event.
Fred will be doing a sausage sizzle and participants will be asked to bring salads, cakes and slices for morning tea and lunch.

UPCOMING EVENTS :

MONTHLY PLANT COMPETITION RESULTS:

February 4: Plant Results

OPEN
1st = Lydia Chinnock = Neoregelia ‘Shelldance’
2nd = Steve Wain = Aechmea ‘Roberto Menescal’
3rd = Sandra Carnie = Neoregelia ‘Enchanted’

NOVICE
1st = Michael Drury = Guzmania ‘Torch’
2nd = Michael Drury = Vriesea hybrid
3rd = Michael Drury = Billbergia vittata

TILLANDSIA
1st = Graham Bevan = xWallfussia ‘Creation’
2nd = Lydia Chinnock = Wallisia cyanea
2nd = Steve Wain = Tillandsia lampropoda
3rd = Steve Wain = Barfussia platyrhachis

May 4 PLANT RESULTS
OPEN
1st = Lydia Chinnock = Canistropsis billbergioides ‘Citron’
2nd = Steve Wain = Aechmea ‘Pilfered’
2nd = Glenrae Barker = Neoregelia ‘Fantasia’
3rd = Yvonne Perinotti = Neoregelia ‘Birdrock’
3rd = Max Williams = Cryptanthus garden

NOVICE
1st = Pam Townsend = Billbergia pyramidalis

TILLANDSIA
1st = Steve Wain = Tillandsia leiboldiana

PLANTS BROUGHT TO OUR MARCH 2017 MEETING:
Aechmea ‘Pilfered’: Steve’s very striking plant is a cross between A. fendleri (dark form) and A. ‘Blue Tango’, made by Chester Skotak and registered in 2003. It is a large plant with the mature rosette reaching to 55 cm diameter x 50 cm high, the leaf width 6 cm and the upright inflorescence reaching to 70 cm tall. It is a median variegated form, having reverse variegation to the equally large A. ‘Buckwheat’, an albomarginated plant which turns pink in bright light. Both sported from the same parent plant from the cross.
Aechmea ‘Roberto-Menescal’: Another from Steve was this glorious aechmea, named and registered by Chester Skotak for its original grower, Roberto Menescal. It is a variegated cultivar of a dark form of A. chantinii from a batch of tissue cultured plants from the lab of Rolf Zornig of São Paulo, Brazil in 2000. What makes it so special are its central variegated stripes of cream and pink on the leaf top, with intense burgundy red on the leaf undersides. This plant can grow to very large sizes of up to twenty four to thirty inches tall [60-75 cm] and eighteen inches wide [45 cm]. As this plant comes from a very tropical habitat it is more sensitive to cold than most aechmeas. {Information from } It was first released at the 2010 World Bromeliad Conference and since then has been one of the most highly sought after bromeliads, but remains quite rare in collections.
Neoregelia ‘Shelldance’: Lydia’s lovely plant was in flower—something I’d not seen before, and this is borne out in the notes below which I have extracted from the Bromeliad Cultivar Register (7051).
N. ‘Shelldance’ was brought into Australia by Don Woods of Perth from the Shelldance Nursery in California, which had ‘Fairy Paint’ as the seed parent, pollen parent unknown. A note added to the BCR page on 2/2012 refers to questions asked at a Bromeliad Society of South Australia meeting about the odd-looking inflorescence, suggesting this may be a xNeotanthus hybrid. There is no proof but doubt was expressed in Andrew Steens’ the Connoisseur’s Guide, published in 2007: “Some people think it may be an intergeneric cross between a neoregelia and a cryptanthus. However, I suspect that it is simply an extreme variation of ‘Fairy Paint’. While this is unusual, it is not unheard of, with N. ‘Burnsie’s Spiral’ being one fairly common example. These types of plants almost never flower but continue to put out new leaves, eventually forming a stem that may reach 50 cm or more in height.” … We will leave this as a neoregelia because that is how it appears in collections throughout Australia.
Neoregelia ‘Walking Thunder’: Among the lovely dark-coloured neoregelias at our March meeting—including N. ‘Birdrock’and N. ‘Mandela’--was Max’s beautiful plant, a Sharon Peterson cross (from Hawaii, registered in 1995) with rich plum-coloured leaves with a green thumbnail at their tips and some green mottling. Seed parent ‘Hal Ellis’, pollen parent ‘Kahala Dawn’, with Neoregelia ‘Gladiator’ coming from the same cross.

CHANGES IN NOMENCLATURE: TEN NEW GENERA ESTABLISHED:
Notes from Peter Waters (Reprinted from Bromeliad, J. BSNZI, January 2017, Vol. 57 No. 1)

Attendees at the 2013 ‘Cool Broms’ Conference will remember well an entertaining talk by José Manzanares. We were privileged to get advance notice of a study involving DNA analysis of the subfamily Tillandsioideae in which it was shown that certain species were not sufficiently related to be retained in their present genera. It has taken some time to have the study reviewed and finally published in a recognized botanical journal, Phytotaxa. The outcome is that ten new genera have been established and some 49 species of Mezobromelia, Tillandsia and Vriesea have changed their names. Luckily not too many of these are in New Zealand so we do not have too many to alter. The name changes are as follows:

ANYONE HAVE WALLISIA CYANEA? LUTHERIA SPLENDENS?
By Mike Wisnev, SFVBS President (mwisnev@gmail.com)
(Reprinted with permission from San Fernando Valley Bromeliad Society Newsletter – November 2016)

Back in January 2014 this Newsletter finished a series of three articles about Tillandsia subgenera and concluded that:

“At the outset of these articles, I mentioned that the Tillandsia subgenera will likely be revised in the near future. Walter Till, who has also studied cacti (and in particular Gymnocalycium), is working on these changes. He and three other botanists at the University of Vienna did an earlier study in 2005 that suggested the current subgenera might not be valid, but the authors felt more intensive study was needed. Barfuss, M.H.J., Samuel, R., Till, W., Stuessy, T.F., 2005. Phylogenetic relationships in subfamily Tillandsioideae (Bromeliaceae) based on DNA sequence data from seven plastid regions. A.J. Bot. 92, 337-351. The 2005 study more or less found these six subgenera were a mess from a DNA standpoint. These studies essentially analyze some of the DNA of the species and then prepare a tree-like diagram based on the way the species group together based on the DNA analysis. For the subgenera to be valid from a DNA standpoint, the tree would have six major branches, and each branch would include one subgenera.”

It has taken about a decade, but finally there is some resolution. In a very lengthy article, the genera Tillandsia and Vriesea have been revised to reflect DNA analysis. Barfuss, M.H.J.; Till, W.; Leme, E.J.C.; Pinzón, J.P.; Manzanares, J.M.; Halbritter, H.; Samuel, R. & Brown, G.K. (2016) Taxonomic revision of Bromeliaceae subfam. Tillandsioideae based on a multi-locus DNA sequence phylogeny and morphology. Phytotaxa 279(1): 001-097.

DNA analysis still leaves room for lumpers and splitters. The authors recognized this, and felt that a splitter’s approach was better since it would have been very difficult to find plant characteristics applicable to the groups if a lumping approach was used. They stated:
“In our opinion, a stable classification of Bromeliaceae subfam. Tillandsioideae has (1) to be based on phylogenetic relationships (i.e., monophyletic units) and (2) should have predictable morphological determinability by synapomorphic combinations of characters, when at least flowering material is available. We therefore evaluated the two most realistic approaches: (1) recognizing three small genera (Catopsis, Glomeropitcairnia, and a new genus segregated from Mezobromelia), one medium size genus (Guzmania), and lumping remaining species into two large genera (Vriesea and Tillandsia) by sinking four well-established and morphologically mostly well-defined genera into synonymy (into Tillandsia: Racinaea; into Vriesea: Alcantarea, Mezobromelia s.str., and Werauhia); or (2) recognizing the six already widely accepted genera (Alcantarea, Catopsis, Glomeropitcairnia, Guzmania, Racinaea, and Werauhia) and splitting three existing genera (Mezobromelia, Tillandsia, and Vriesea) into smaller groups. The first scenario would primarily create the two morphologically very heterogeneous and ill-defined genera, Vriesea and Tillandsia, both with no predictive value, meaning that synapomorphic combinations of diagnostic morphological characters are absent to define these genera for all species that have to be included. The second scenario allows the recognition of several smaller genera, which are well circumscribed morphologically and are monophyletic, and an emended narrower circumscription of established genera. We therefore implemented the second splitting approach since also previous investigations have clearly shown that only smaller groups can be morphologically well characterized (e.g., Costa et al. 2014, Grant 1995a, Kromer et al., 2012, Leme 2007, Spencer & Smith 1993, Versieux & Wanderley 2015).” Id. At 31.

As a result, they created a number of new genera for both Tillandsia and Vriesea, though most of each genus remain the same. Some of the new names are below.

Most of us know the well-known T. cyanea. It and its relatives, like T. lindenii, are now considered Wallisia cyanea and Wallisia lindeniana. As an aside, the problems with the species names are horrific—the plant we know as T. cyanea was actually first called T. lindenii, as was T. lindenii. To add more confusion, the plant many of us know as T. lindenii may actually be a hybrid between cyanea and lindenii.

One of the most spectacular species is the aptly named T. grandis. Now it is called Pseudalcantarea grandis. A couple of other species are in this genus—P. viridiflora and P. macropetala.

Other new genera created from Tillandsia are Lemeltonia, Josemania and Barfussia. A bit more on the latter can be found under Member Photos. Many of the new genera are characterized by certain shapes of their stigma or pollen. For example, Barfussia have convolute-obconic stigma.

Similar divisions occurred for Vriesea. As noted above, Alcantarea and Werauhia still are good genera. Most vriesea species remain in the genus, but now there are five new genera—Goudaea, Jagrantia, Lutheria, Zizkaea, and Stigmatodon, as well as a Cipuropsis-Mezobromelia complex. Two of the more well-known species are now Lutheria splendens and L. glutinosa. Another is Goudaea ospinae, which has the unusual matte finished leaves, rather than glossy.

If you haven’t seen them, here are some sites with lists of all the species.
1. . Accepted Bromeliaceae names: http://botu07.bio.uu.nl/data/bromNames.php 2. . Bromeliaceae names and synonyms: http://taxonlist.florapix.nl/

TILLANDSIA CYANEA {WALLISIA CYANEA} AND HER BIG SISTER, TILLANDSIA LINDENII {WALLISIA ‘DUVALII’(?)}
By Larry Giroux (Reprinted from the Caloosahatchee BS’s Meristem May 2006.)
{In a more recent article “Wallisia or Single Paddles” by Derek Butcher (2016) Derek tells us that T. lindenii no longer exists and that Wallisia lindeniana is the new name for T. umbellata. I will reprint his article in our July Newslink to help clarify the matter regarding the new name for T. lindenii —Ed.}

I have a large basket of Tillandsia cyanea and a pot of T. lindenii and I do not have any problem distinguishing between them. Apparently, though, from the time Linden first described T. cyanea in 1867 and Regel published his description of T. lindenii in 1868, taxonomists, the likes of Morren, Duval, Dombrain, Mez, as well as Linden and Regel themselves, have vacillated about which is which.

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