Sorry, I should have mentioned they were purchased as A. imperialis. Do you think they could be A. vinicolor?

Hmmm . . .

Here is a link that might be useful: Alcantarea 'Tarawera'

Bob, whatever they are, straight, vinicolor, rubra, whatever. . . . . They are beautifull!!! Thanks for sharing them.

I am really not having a good day, now I am even mixing up names! Sorry Mike. But is does not take away my appreciation of the picture or the plants in the picture. Japie

I have never seen an imperialis that color, Mike-- here or elsewhere-- and vinicolor would be smaller than that. I don't know how big 'Tarawera' gets, but that was my first thought too, particularly since it's on the Big Island.

Speaking of giants, I saw this big imperialis just the other day at the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, and couldn't resist taking a picture of it. The cutie standing next to it is my niece, visiting from the Mainland.

{{gwi:470091}}

Thanks for bringing this great photo to our forum Mike. I am just enjoying a morning coffee, and soaking up the view of fantastic Alcantarea's. (Can I ask what forum the original photo was posted..?)

A.Tawarea originally came from Hawaii to NZ. So there will be some of that style plant around, but it is smaller than the plant in your photo. A Tawarea is imperialis X vinicolor, and size is closer to vinicolor than imperialis. I have a plant of a vinicolor X imperialis, so it will be interesting to see how its colour develops as it matures.

So, I would say the plants in your photo are a form of A. imperialis Rubra, just the conditions they are growing in, somehow bring out that lovely red colouration.

There are some A imperialis Rubra at a local subtropical garden "Totara Waters" (see link) They had 2 groups of A. imperialis Rubra, as can be seen in the photo gallery, and all originally came from the same source. However, as they matured, one group (bottom right photo) developed that amazing red colouration thoughout the whole plant. They were grown hard, in full sun...but something caused this group to "colour up" more than the others. Now I have tried growing A. imperialis rubra in a range of conditions, but have not managed to get this colour....yet...

BTW if you ever visit NZ, this garden is a must see...!

Here is a link that might be useful: Totara Waters

Sorry I didn't see the replies sooner!

The picture was originally posted on the palmtalk.org forum. I guess it seems they were sold as hybrids, from David Fell himself. So I would assume A.'Tarawera'.

Since Alcantarea only throw grass pups, is that how mutiples of these plants were grown you think? I guess I can't imagine how you could get large numbers of an Alc. hybrid.

Here is a link that might be useful: PalmTalk Forum - Alcantarea Topic

Alcantareas produce their "grass pups" only when the plant is quite small, in fact when you remove a pup it may already have several smaller pups forming on it, so that makes it fairly easy to build up a large population of (2-4" pot sized) plantlets in a relatively short period of time. There are a lot of forms of A. imperialis, and some clones produce a lot more of these little pups than others. A. vinicolor forms them too, although one of the comments on the other forum seemed to imply otherwise.

In any event, once the plant matures it stops producing these, and the only way to propagate it at that point is to wait for flowering and seed production, which would not make for a uniform crop, particularly with a hybrid.

This makes it kind of frustrating when you've started out with a seed crop. The coloration of A. vinicolor seedlings can be quite variable, from plain green to brilliant red. Obviously you want to select only the best clones to propagate, but by the time they've grown out enough to see which the best clones are, they've stopped pupping already!

Another way is to tissue-culture it, but you'd have to use either the pups or the inflorescence as a source of TC material, unless you wanted to sacrifice the whole plant for its meristem.