Jan/Feb 2005 :Bromeliad Gazette. Vol:29. Number:01

November Meeting from the Secretary’s desk
The discussion on the plant display was led by Len Colgan.
Did anybody miss smelling the Tillandsia. zecheri var. brealitoensis and the T. xiphioides var tafiensis? Both plants look similar and I wonder if the scent was different. The authenticity of the var tafiensis seems to be correct because the plant was collected by Lotte Hromradnik. Mind you, the first one I got from her had white flowers and I got a ‘proper’ one on the second attempt. This shows how easily it is to misidentify plants in this group even though you may have done extensive collecting in the area. In fact there is a lot of conjecture about the evolution of Tillandsias in this high barren land of northern Argentina and southern Bolivia and how each is related to each other. Identification is a challenge and I am much more vague than Len as to identity. For example the T. zecheri var. brealitoensis was described with no reference to it having a scent but the plant that Chris Larson, from Melbourne collected from this area does have a scent. Is it a true var brealitoensis? Or another form or even a form of var tafiensis. A discussion that will keep us amused for years.
You will, by now, have got used to Len’s love of parents whereas I prefer to use the name allotted to the plant. Just as in humans when a child is born and bears no similarity to either parent so to do we see things in plants. As Cultivar Registrar I am often puzzled by the parents quoted by a hybridist but I know that many hybridists do not know the identity of the parents concerned, nor do they know much about the promiscuity of Bromeliads where any pollen will do the trick! I digress! Did you see the Canistrum ‘Big Emma’ brought in by Keith Bradtberg? This was one that Len did not ask about parents but he did link it – very astutely I might add – to Canistrum fosterianum that Margaret had brought in. We do not know for certain where the name came from but it is a Canistrum fosterianum with an extra large inflorescence. Even with Keith’s latest feeding frenzy the inflorescence did not seem extra large to me. I am sure that it is the quirky sense of humour of one John Catlan from Pelican Point who coined the name. All I know for certain is that the plant came from him.
Lucky for Maureen that she has Judy to do her heavy work for her. It must have been 25 years ago when Maureen bragged about growing Aechmea triangularis on a rock from the river Murray. Admittedly it grew – slow but sure – but rarely had the oomph to flower for year after year. This year something happened. Was it a limb that had been removed from overhead or a spot of fertilizer it had been missing for so many years. Whatever, it decided to flower and because Maureen knew we would never believe her, she got Judy to bring the plant plus rock in for us to see. A. triangularis is not easy to grow in Adelaide even in a pot and is the best in the Macrochordion group of Aechmea. Yes, these plants with a corn-cob like inflorescence have a group all of their own. Most have white or yellow petals that turn black but A. triangularis has blue that turn black! All this group need to be grown in strongish light so that the leaves retain a bottle shape and should not be over fed. Dare I suggest – on a rock!
You do know that if you cross a blue flowered plant with a yellow flowered plant there is a great chance that the child will have grey flowers. Years ago Peter Franklin from Raymond Terrace in NSW discussed the grey petalled plant we had which was clearly in the Macrochordion group. We even came up with the name ‘Old Grey Mare’ but as chance would have it we came across a plant called ‘Red Bands’ in the USA which just had to be our plant!
We were very lucky that Peter Huddy from Port Elliot did not come up for the meeting, after all he used to enjoy being an auctioneer. Anyway, he would have gone bananas when he saw that Vriesea with ‘Banana’ on the label. It has always been called ‘Bananas’ because the inflorescence looks like a bunch of bananas. Never do you see it with one banana.
Margaret had to bring in her Aechmea carvalhoi because it looked so colourful with bright red scape bracts and branched inflorescence. The petals are a delicate pale mauve with white sepals and green ovary.

And so to the plant swap and Auction. Colin Waterman ‘volunteered’ to be the Auctioneer, Len Colgan the sweeper to make sure all plants did get auctioned under the right name, and Eileen Mullins was the bag lady. They all must have performed above their normal standard because we raised $489 for our funds. A great time was had by one and all.

One plant that seemed a paradox to Len was a Nidularium paradoxum. Details are shown below so I hope the recipient and the donor will change their labels. This plant is somewhat unique.

Do you have a plant with any of the following names on the label? Wittrockia paradoxa, Nidularium paradoxum, xNiduregelia paradoxa, or ‘Butcher’s been at it again’, If so read on.
This plant has a fascinating history, so no wonder was it having trouble in keeping up with its name changes. At the 1995 Australian Bromeliad Conference I was handed a plant with a somewhat gooey centre by Ruby Ryde which I assumed she had obtained from Brazil a few years before. How could I ask Elton Leme to help me out with identification? I just had to poke around in the mushy mess where the flower had been. I felt sure I was handling Wittrockia paradoxa which had been described by Elton Leme in 1989 because I appeared to be dealing with a paradox with the number of oddities I found in the mushy mess! Incidentally, if you try to find Wittrockia paradoxa it is now called Aechmea paradoxa! 2 years later I was delighted to get an actual flowering specimen, again from Ruby. The plant looked like a Neoregelia with a Nidularium-like inflorescence. This time there was no mushy mess when I took the inflorescence apart and I found compound flowers in the outer part of the inflorescence and simple flowers in the centre. What am I talking about? I’ll digress. If you have ever looked closely at a Neoregelia inflorescence (well most!) you will find it boring because all the way through the inflorescence you will find one floral bract next to a flower. In a Nidularium you will find little bunches of flowers with a bract for the bunch as well as floral bracts for each flower ( This is compound! Mind you, in Nidularium you may also find bunches on the bunches making them compound compound or tripinnate!) This cannot be said to be boring! Elton Leme had described a Nidularium fraudulentum in 1987 which had these attributes. It was not a paradox, it was a fraud! This just had to be the name and I told the world of my discovery (Well, at least Bromeletter May/June 1997! ).

Meanwhile Elton in Brazil was rather worried about this plant with odd characteristics and investigated it further in conjunction with Walter Till. It was decided the plant was a bigeneric between Neoregelia and Nidularium.

In Elton’s book ‘Nidularium’ (2000) Shock! Horror! there are 3 xNiduregelia to pick from and none was an exact match to the plant that I thought should have been xNiduregelia fraudulenta. The closest one was xNiduregelia lyman-smithii but I could not get Elton to answer my Emails. The problem is a hard one to solve. Let me explain. In the wild there are fertile plants in a range and all share the same species name. As far as we are aware bigenerics in the Bromeliaceae are infertile and incapable of reproducing - in other words a genetic dead end. If I ever obtain an alleged hybrid and want to prove it is a hybrid I do not do pollen counts but try to set self-set seed and check on the resultant seedlings for similarities to or differences from the seed parent. So I was at a dead end too! Bigeneric hybrids are not easy to do intentionally as Mulford Foster experienced (See the article in fcbs.org on Julian Nally and letters in the 1960’s) and seem to be very rare in the wild. Mez 1935 reported 2 from the late 1800’s and Smith and Downs 1979 only 1 of these 2. It does seem strange that any bigeneric had not been collected in the intervening 80 years and now we have a flurry of them!

These bigeneric hybrids of Elton’s are in a Chapter entitled ‘Doubtful and excluded Taxa’ but have been accepted as legal latinised names by the Bromeliad Identification Center in the USA. No one took records of what plants were growing in the vicinity of these plants at their supposed collection site so parents are unknown and only conjecture remains. To further add to the confusion, the third one of the trio, xNiduregelia edmundoi has a type locality of Bahia (leg. A.Seidel 1005) but a specimen was also supposed to have been found in Espirito Santo ( leg. A Seidel 1004). I suggest that the chances of having the same unknown parents from different genera and occuring in a different area would be astronomical! Add to this, the same happening occurred with different unknown parents in xNiduregelia fraudulenta but on this occasion in the States of Bahia (leg. A Seidel 1006) AND Rio de Janeiro (leg A Seidel 678)! What are the odds now?

I believe what really happened was that Seidel mixed up his collecting data with plants grown from seed and these seedlings reached Elton Leme for investigation not the original collections. I base this assumption on the fantastic odds of such bigeneric happenings in the wild from such widely spaced habitats, and something that Ruby has just told me. Ruby’s plant came from seed obtained from Seidel!

To my mind it would have been better to have named these plants under the ICNCP rules where only a clone retains the name of the Cultivar not a range of clones as under the ICBN rules for natural species.

In my role as Cultivar Registrar you can see my dilemma. Should I try to identify with the written descriptions of what I consider are dubious examples of wild plants or give the plant I got from Ruby Ryde a Cultivar name. The more I think of it the more I believe OUR plant is better called xNiduregelia ‘Ruby Ryde’ to stem the tide of name changes.

Plant sales and Show November 27-28
Friday afternoon was HOT – something like 39C. Way over the temperature where we would cancel our monthly meeting BUT WE WERE committed. Advertising done and letters of invitation had been sent! Plants were quickly unloaded to the coolness of the Hall before work could start in setting up! This was achieved with the usual efficiency in under an hour . Less space was needed for the display because no judging was to occur. Even so, the standard was high and the public had something to refer to and see how Bromeliads can be grown.
Saturday was also hot and we feared that the high temperature would deter the public but they still rolled up. The cooler morning was more popular and by early afternoon there was time for a chat with other workers.
Sunday was cooler – perhaps 37C! and morning was again the busiest time. Luckily, by knock-off there was sufficient cloud cover for us to get our plants home with the minimum of sunscorch.
Financially it was a success with over $500 going into our bank balance.

The white walls of South Ecuador.
by Walter Fischer in Die Bromelie 2/2003 translated by George Rudolph.

One of the first tillandsias I had given to me was a T. tectorum. This plant has always been my favourite. After the experience of our first trip in 1994 I went with my wife and brother-in-law the following year to the south of Ecuador. I found that reading the book by Gilmartin about the Bromeliads of this country very helpful.

Early in the morning we arrived in Quito. Unfortunately it was not possible to get an immediate flight to Cuenca, so we had to wait to late afternoon. We find a hotel, rent a car and make preparations for our first outing on the next day. We started early in a southerly direction towards Loja. After 40 km we reached the Paramo of Tinajillas possibly the nicest Paramo (high plateau) in the country. We saw some Puya hamata which were in flower. A beautiful sight with their 4m high inflorescences. This part of the Panamerican highway was in good condition which made the drive in this landscape more enjoyable. Later on we stopped near Ona. In a small valley of the river Rio Leon. We are surprised to find many different tillandsias. To our joy we saw some T.tectorum, but more about that later on.

It should be understood that while driving along we not only looked at the landscape but also at the many different plants especially the Bromeliads. About 10 km from Loja we saw some T. straminea in dense bushes where they grew in big colonies. On closer inspection we made the acquaintance of some unfriendly insects. After arriving in Loja and finding accommodation the holiday should really start. Loja is the furthest southerly state capital with 50,000 inhabitants seemed to me more remote and did not have the colonial character of Cuenca, but the people were still friendly. There seemed to be many mestizos amongst the inhabitants, as well as in the surrounding area.

We head north and find many T.straminea in a wide area, epiphytic on thorny bushes. It is a small form with some still flowering. Not far away is a rubbish dump and pieces of plastic hang in the bushes and trees. What a contrast! Will plants survive in such an environment?

We drive further on and it gets wet - we are in the fog zone. As it is still early in the morning our thermometer shows 13 deg.C. The plants have changed. Instead of the dry grey-brown everything is a nice green. Moss, ferns and small types of orchids grow here. Not far from the Panamericana highway we saw a beautiful Puya with rigid nearly steel-blue leaves. Its beauty dominated the area. We guessed it was Puya clava-herculis. We left the area and drove deeper into a side valley and there where many tillandsias to be seen.

It got warmer and the plants are dry and show their white color. We saw T. latifolia var. divaricata in large groups. Also a large form of T. disticha growing epiphytically on bushes and on the ground covering about 10 m by 10m. In the middle was a group of the cactus Espostoa lanata. A beautiful sight.

Our next destination is a small village Vilcabamba, about 40 km south of Loja, not only to look for tillandsias. There are supposed to be amongst the 1000 inhabitants many that reach 100 years of age. That has us made curious. The village is ringed by high mountains (3000m)and lies in a valley at 800 m. The reason for the longevity is supposed to be the vegetables that grow in the special earth. On the drive there we could see few plants in the rocky surface. Only in a small wood near the village did we find T. incarnata and T. latifolia. Driving further on in a southeasterly direction towards Zamora, at 8 km we reach a type of moor at 2600 m where the plant world looks different. The road leads in serpentine bends down to a valley before Sabanella - the next stop. A lovely spot where many different plants grow in a small area. A group of Cattleya maxima with large fruit, also Epidendrum and small types of orchids. As far as tillandsias go only some large examples of T. fraseri (now Racinaea fraseri). Further down the valley near Sonaderos we were surprised by a strong plant of Encyclia vespa with20 inflorescences in full bloom also nearby in high grass some examples of the species Sobralia.

We took a drive from Loja in the direction of Catamajo-Velacruz-Catacocha. After about 15 km the winding road descends to the valley of Catamajo. It gets hot and our car leaves a cloud of dust behind us. Before Velacruz we found beautiful examples of T.disticha, T. straminea, T.narthecoides,T.flagellata, & T. floribunda. Also a nice example of a Jatropha stood in the dust on the edge of the road. The thorny bushes where full of T.caerulea and T. recurvata. Two men in a truck loaded with sugar cane came to our assistance when we had a puncture. When they found out we were interested in plants one took us to a stand of Tillandsia mima. They knew the area very well. Taking a good look we found a small form of T. latifolia and T. purpurea with soft leaves and lovely inflorescences. We made further scouting trips from Cuenca. To get to our goal, the great stands of T. tectorum we drove southwest in the direction of Giron- Machala. At the pass of Santa Isabel at 1800 m you reach the water divide between the western Andes slopes and the inner Andes dry desert-like valleys. After Santa Isabel near Tablan we found isolated plants of T. tectorum. Nice groups covered the steep rocks, then we descended to the bed of the river Rircaj. Our eyes grew as the white spots got bigger. Large T. disticha with their red-brown leaves contrasted with the silver-white T. tectorum. In the river bed were thickets of Hechtia, Dyckia and Vriesea olmosana. A few km on between El Tablan and Abamin we found a side track. We found it was possible to drive but dangerous as there was no way to get past oncoming traffic. But we were lucky and at 1100m height we found a place to leave the car. Now we stood at the destination of our trip; in the middle of large groups of T. tectorum. All the hardship of the trip now seemed worthwhile!. All the slopes as well as the opposite slopes of the river Rircaj were covered in silver splendor. I consider this form the most beautiful because the scales are so dense. The plants grow close together and build big cushions. A very small form we found in a side valley. We discovered further down the river more T. tectorum up to 1.2 m long growing on rocks. On the drive in the direction of Pasaje near the village of Uzhcurrumi we saw T. complanata making this the loveliest day of our trip.

Names and Identity by Derek Butcher
To me, names and identity are not the same thing!
When humans are born they are given a name and this goes into a birth certificate. Only when we are adult do we get official photographs for such things as Driver’s licences and Passports. These are legal requirements. It is just that we change our looks so much in our developing years.

Let us now look at pets and dogs in particular. To a Veterinarian or a Biologist dogs come in many shapes and sizes. To a dog breeder it is more specialised and these dogs are named and have pedigrees. Their worth depends on how true to breed they are and can be considerable. Then there are mongrels who are given names by their owners and become equal when adult, with the pedigreed ones in the eyes of authorities for dog registration. This again is a legal requirement.

Plants found in the wild are given a Latin name by a taxonomist. To be accepted by other taxonomists it must be backed by a herbarium specimen of a flowering plant. Sometimes in scientific journals you see this name with n. n. against it meaning nomen nudum. This is where another taxonomist considers the name as illegitimate and as such not acceptable.

Plants found in cultivation which seem to be different in the eyes of a Nurseryman (or grower) can also be given names to differentiate them from other stock they hold. For convenience sake I call these N N for Nurseryman’s names and include such things as
1. var. rubra which can mean red leaves or red flowers or red? because it has never been defined.
2. Formula of parents of man made hybrids which do not identify a plant just the collection of siblings. In other words, consider the differences between yourself and your brothers and sisters.
3. Names given to plants without registering them so we have no proof what they look like.
There is no formal link between name and identity, and there are NO legal requirements as long as you watch out for plant patents.

Plants occurring in Cultivation can be registered under a voluntary system. Details are held in a Register maintained by the BSI under BSI.org under Cultivar Corner. One requirement is a photograph of an adult in line with the situations with humans and plants found in the wild, as quoted above. Therefore registered names can be linked to identity.

You may have read my views in Journ. Brom. Soc 53:133-6. 2003 on the number of cultivars there are for Vriesea fosteriana and you may have read my comments in a recent edition of the NZ Journal on a similar topic. I have been trying to point out that there are many variables in leaf markings and colourings in this group of vrieseas. This is why I coined the Glyph Group. These variables change on the road to maturity not only because the plant is maturing but culture.

There have been many names given to these variants which have not been registered. This does not surprise me because the demand for them is there and the plants are only juvenile. Whatever you may be told, it is inevitable their colouration and leaf markings will change as they mature.

The only way to check identity is to consult, on-line, the Bromeliad Cultivar Register on BSI.org under Cultivar Corner to see if the name is there. Your next challenge is to see if your plant looks ‘more-or-less’ like the photograph.

On the same theme of names and identity, I notice in the September 2004 issue of the New Zealand Journal that Peter Waters made comment on the identification of Aechmea fasciata cultivars at the August meeting. First I must say this is the first time I have heard that ‘Morgana’ has always had spines even though it was promoted in the USA as being ‘spineless’ in the early 1990’s. We will never know the true story because Corn. Bak never formally registers names. However, if you refer to the on-line Cultivar Register on BSI.org under Cultivar Corner and enter fasciata in the Cultivar group section you will get 16 replies. Some are allegedly spineless! So I would be wary in calling any ‘spineless’ ‘Morgana’ as being ‘Primera’. Is a leaf spiny if you find only one spine? We must also remember that Bromeliads are notorious for sporting and many of our plants are offsets of offsets. Finally, ‘Primera’ has current plant breeders rights in Europe and if in Europe I would never identify an unnamed plant as a ‘Primera’ because the plant owner could be prosecuted for selling the offsets!