Bilbergia

My Billbergia Windii just openning, sent as an offshoot feb last year from Martin 'Windy Gale' It has another bud waiting.

 

Lovely, Strongy, really healthy looking.

Mine bloomed this year but was rather poor looking, more from neglect than from anything else. Do you clean the leaves regularly? Wipe them off or shower them?

 

I don't touch them Kedi as they have fine white moisture retaining scales (indumentum) on the underside of the leaves. I may try one of the smaller one outside with the Billbergia Nutans Variegata but this one is inside and I just fill the 'vases'

 

Perhaps that is what I have been doing wrong all along - watering the soil! Thanks for the tip, Strongy.

 

Fantastic strongy .... I don't have that one. Mine have to suffer the heat in the summer under one of the Jacarandas and bloom in the Winter/Spring. I just water from the top ..... with my ghastly tap water .....

 

Looking good Strongy. Stunning flower

I was given a couple of Billbergia nutans plants at another forum meet up a while back. The nutans is apparantly reasonably hardy, so im going to give it a try outside, certainly the guy who gave them to me has had them outside in pots for a year years in Hertfordshire, so its probably a candidate for trying in most of the South.

 

TG I am reliably informed that they can survive mild winters particularly in the south and west but elsewhere it does depend on just how cold it gets. I have a Billberia Nutans Var but I will bring it indoors sometime in winter as I don't want to lose it at least not till I have several.

 

Kedi, I meant to say that I don't or haven't sprayed or showered the plant with water but I DO water the soil occasionally.:rolleyes:
Tillandsias and the more strictly epiphytic Bromeliads require spraying more than Billbergias as they are sold and grown without soil.

 

Thanks Strongy :thumb:

 

Rather like this Tillandsia bergeri that I've had tied to a Yucca trunk in a south facing border for several years. It has never produced anything remotely like a root and lives purely purely on rainfall and atmospheric moisture absorbed through the leaves. Occasionally I take it down and dunk it in a bucket of very dilute Maxicrop.

 

That's looking good Dave, I was tempted to try T. Usniodes outside but bearing in mind what you said and as I have several sparrow families around not to mention Starlings and Blackbirds, I think I will keep it at work.

 

Well, as soon as I can find a moment to get over to Burnham Nurseries (Orchid specialists, but they also do Tillandsias inc. huge hanks of usneoides) I'll risk another load to the local avians' domestic arrangements. It looks quite eerie draped around the garden especially when we get a heavy sea mist roll in.

I've now got the ideal perch for some serious quantities of usneoides in the form of a rapidly expanding crown of Cornus capitata. 9 years from seed, it now 16 feet high and a good 12 feet across with plenty of horizontal branches. By the time I've finished it will look like tinsel on a Christmas tree

That bergeri has proved remarkably enduring and flowers every June without fail. I have to remember to mist the rosettes daily when the pink spikes appear otherwise its rather fragile-looking soft blue flowers fail to push out from between the bracts. I forgot this year, in fact I failed to go and check for spikes and only remembered as they were starting to fade.

 

I have a small Catopsis just come into flower, greeny yellow, nothing special so I am not sure whether to try it outside, I haven't had one before.
I might be tempted with Usneoides, it might look good on my Callistemon Viminalis which is a 8/9 ft tree.