Tillandsia schusteri X achyrostachys
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Tillandsia schusteri X achyrostachys
schusteri x achyrostachys
Len Colgan ... "Many years ago at Bird Rock Tropicals I purchased a number of Pam's hybrids where she crossed T. achyrostachys with various purple flowering Mexican tillandsias that happened to be in flower at the right time.
Four of them survived the gassing and quarantine. Three of these flowered quite some years ago, and I showed them on this forum. They were T. bulbosa x achyrostachys, T. carlsoniae x achyrostachys and T. ehlersiana x achyrostachys. Knowing that T. achyrostachys has a powder-pink upright single spike with green flowers, the resulting hybrids had predictable properties. The one using T. carlsoniae was particularly nice. In all three cases, the flowers were purple, which I assumed implied that this was a more dominant colour than green.
However, the fourth one had not flowered until now. This was not surprising because it is T. schusteri x achyrostachys, and in my experience T. schusteri is a very slow grower with offsets taking more than ten years to flower.
It has a spike very similar to T. achyrostachys except that it is not simple. Quite nice! And it has green flowers!!!"
Chris Larson ... "I’d punt on the difference being that T. schusteri has yellow flowers, making a blue flower not likely, and the green has been predominant."
Len Colgan ... "Of course it does. How silly am I? Yes, T. schusteri does have yellow flowers. By the way, T. achyrostachys has green leaves, whereas this hybrid has grey leaves, obviously coming from the T. schusteri."
Updated 26/03/17