hey brom phil, I'm afraid you live right in the middle of a void re brom societies. You are in between Newcastle and The Gold Coast brom societies - I think Newcastle would be the closer, but still a long drive. I have a friend who travels from Bellbrook (inland of Kempsey, towards Armidale) to the monthly meetings at the Central Coast brom society. I live north of Lismore in N.S.W., hinterland Byron Bay, and travel north to the G.Coast meetings. Then there is the Qld soc. based in Brisbane, and the Sunshine coast soc. as well - worth checking out when you visit your nan. Contact me via email if you want more information. Cheers, Kerry

Well, if you only buy one plant, Bambi, make it carcharodon 'Tiger'. This is my absolute favorite Neo. at the moment! I first saw it at the 2000 convention when it was going for $100, and since I had only allotted myself a $300 budget I couldn't bring myself to blow a third of it on one plant. It haunted my dreams for about a year, though, and finally I decided I had to have it, whatever the price! I was ordering from Michael anyway, so I asked him to find me one. By that time I was able to get it for $40, and I see now he's selling them for $25. It is a very prolific pupper, unlike carcharodon 'Rubra', so it has become widespread and affordable now. It is a big, very hard-leafed, spiny monster that makes me happy every time I look at it! The one on the right in the pic is in an 8" pot, so that gives you some idea of its size. Here is a link that might be useful: Michael's Bromeliads

Hi Betty Lu, 1. I think they'll be fine as long as they don't freeze. Above 50 is better, and you can put in a small heater if it dips down. Some species are more sensitive to cold, like most aechmeas. Neos are more tolerant of cold. 2. Not necessarily. If a plant puts out nice pups which grow out, then I separate them when they are 1/2 to 2/3 size of the parent, and I will repot the pups in a single pot. As they get bigger, you can of course put them individually in larger pots. I keep the parent plant if it's still alive to make more pups. 3. They are constantly growing, and will flower at different times depending on the species. 4. I keep mine in part shade/bright shade in the warm months. Morning sun is good because it doesn't burn like the afternoon sun. They can make nice groupings under trees or large bushes where there is filtered light. Maybe you can put them out when night temps are above 55F? I'm in N. California and bring the prized plants indoors for the coldest months. Some stay outside under the eaves where it is going to capture some warmth emitting from the house. While they may not be hit by an overhead frost, they are still vulnerable if a persistent freeze comes a long.

Hi everyone. Dave - You've just hit the nail on the head when you say, "you must soon run out of room" as that's exactly what happened to me. When I first started growing bromeliad seed I never thought it could get out of hand like it did; in fact if I had followed the advice I was given when I started, it wouldn’t have gotten out of hand. I had been told by a well-known hybridist to “cull ruthlessly” and this was where I made my big mistake. You see I couldn’t bring myself to toss out healthy looking little plants and it was always a case of “grow it a bit longer and see how it develops”. The fact is, I forgot that little seedling eventually grow into adult plants which need to be accommodated. To asses the true worth of these seedling you really need to grow them to maturity and that’s where I came unstuck, as I didn’t have the growing area to do this. In our normal size suburban back yard I quickly ran out of space and plants became overcrowded which of course isn’t the best recipe for successful growing. Plants become overcrowded and compete with each other for light and before long all you can see are unattractive plants with long gangly leaves devoid of colour. To overcome this I had to cull anyway, there was no other answer, so I selected some that looked like they could have a bit of potential and tossed the rest (about 75%). The remaining plants all had leaves about twice as long as they should be, and were very soft and droopy. I realised that these plants wouldn’t improve, and any chance I had was with future pups, so to hurry up pup production I decided to stress the plants to initiate pups more quickly. To do this I shortened the leaf length by half which meant in most cases cutting off about ten to twelve inches of each leaf. I now had a bench full of sorry looking excuses for plants, but at least they did have space to grow and I reckoned that now the plants didn’t have to provide nourishment for all of the excess foliage this nourishment could be directed to any new pups. It was only a month or two before the new pups started to poke their heads out from the base of the plants and in many cases it was two pups, one on each side. As they grew, the original plant declined and when the pups were three quarters the size of the original plant, I cut the original out which made more space for the pups to grow unrestricted. When spring time came I had a lot of nice healthy pups which unfortunately didn’t look the best as they were all growing to one side of the pot. This was due to the fact the original plants had been in the centre of the pot, so they were all re-potted and have now grown into nice healthy almost adult plants. It’s been a lesson well learned and a mistake I’ll never make again. This is where it all started. ....and they grew .......and grew Then they were potted up into small pots and move to the baby section of the shade house. ......as they got bigger they were potted on and moved to the seedling shade house where they just got bigger and bigger until they stared to get out of control. The following year they were all twice as large as what you see here and that's when the culling took place and things are now back under control again. So yes Dave, I did soon run out of room. All the best, Nev.