| AECPhotos |
| PERSONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY REPRODUCTIONS--FIFTY |
CLICK TO RETURN TO PAGE 2 OF LIST OF PAPERS CLICK TO RETURN TO PAGE 1 OF LIST OF PAPERS CLICK TO RETURN TO PAGE 3 OF LIST OF PAPERS 55. KRULIK, GERALD, Caging Your Bromeliads, PUP TALK (Saddleback Valley Bromeliad Society), 15 (11) p. 8, November, 2008. Caging Your Bromeliads By Jerry Krulik Plant labeling is normally not a problem. You pot the plant, put a label in the soil, or attach it to the plant body, and you are done. You can now move the plant around, mix it with others of the same species or not, and expect that the plant and the info will remain together and identifiable. But what about small plants, like many rootless Tillandsias? Things like T. recurvata or usneoides, and other tiny clustering types? Things that easily fragment and fall to the ground, to be picked up and placed wherever space permits? I know that you will say, why bother to label them? What is the problem? Everyone knows them by sight. Yes, this is true. But there are serious collectors out there, especially people who want to do taxonomic work, or who just like to see and compare plants from different parts of their ranges. These collectors normally have LOTS of plants. I personally have several dozen clones of usneoides, but unlabeled. I can’t tell my Louisiana plants from my Florida plants, or my plants from unknown locales. Ditto on recurvata, since my Texas plants have proliferated along with my other clones. I recently acquired some plants of T. usneoides, recurvata, and aeranthos from remote locations which are visibly different from the rest of my plants. They are also mostly too small to even attach labels to, so I was at a loss as to where I could grow them. Fortunately I found a decent solution at the local discount store. I was browsing the gardening accessories, when I saw some specialized bird feeders, called suet feeders. These are small rectangular metal cages, plastic coated, for filling with fat and meat scraps for wild birds. They are hinged for easy opening and even have a hooked chain for hanging. I found that these are perfect for the smallest plants, making it easy to segregate and identify plants from different collections. Of course, there is no ideal solution. My yard is infested with hummingbirds, which don’t care anything about the original locale of the plants, so they cannot be seed propagated. As long as I cut off any seed pods, I should be able to permanently maintain their identities by keeping all offsets segregated in the cages. Suet feeders. Hanging near my succulents. Now you can see why I need cages. Tillandsia aeranthos in flower. Tillandsia usneoides on left, T. recurvata on right. Tillandsia aeranthos. |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
