John and Agatha, This is a timely post! Our local bromeliad society is focusing on foliage Vrieseas at our meeting this coming Saturday. Part of the meeting will be a Power Point presentation with lots of plant pics. Do you have any objections to copying some of the above photos to include in our presentation? The production photos would be particularly enlightening, as we have no facilities that would compare within 1000 miles! A few of our members have acquired a decent representation of Shigii and Arden hybrids. We can only hope that the Maloy's hybrids will eventually reach the USA as well. (hdd- what do you know that you're not telling us?!) The hybridizing program that they have in place in NZ is nothing short of remarkable! Thanks for posting some wonderful photos. Paul

My Angel's Summer dream has been flowering for quite some time now. It is a real bloomer, keeps going and going and going. I havent been impressed with much fragrance and any fragrance I do smell isnt the kind of fragrance I like in Brugmansia. The flowers themselves dont last as long on the ASD as they do on my Supernova Brugmansia. I would give 3-4 days for each bloom to last. I will likely scrap it and try a Dr. Suess since I am more after fragrance than just a flower.

Roflmao, Good one Dave. Shawn that is beautiful. I have always loved the deep oranges. I am finally getting some flowers about to open on many of mine. I'll have to take some actual brug photos now, lol.

Bill I love the sphinx moths and they are just about the only thing around here that pollinate my brugs. Even with them I usually have to rely on hand pollination. Unfortunately they are also the most destructive brug pests in their larval stage. An adult hornworm can defoliate a brug almost overnight. Their camouflage is so good that you usually don't know they are there until the damage is done. I grow some extra tomatoes and keep the hornworms on those. I'm not sure if using the same varieties to pollinate each other would give you that variety because of the combination of genes in each parent plant. It would be an interesting experiment. The only brug I can think of offhand that is self pollinating is the arborea.