Thanks again for the comments! I got some nice pics again last night and will try to post a few more today. I love seeing pics of lilies that others are fond/proud of, as it gives you so much more input than a catalogue. Down side is that if people on this forum rave about something ( like Rocket City, which I tried like crazy to find last fall and EVERYONE was sold out!!), it is sometimes hard to find! Julie, the tag line in my photos is not of the nursery that I have purchased from, but rather the name that I have chosen to use when I trade and/or sell (and hopefully soon register a few seedlings!) We have gotten a little overgrown, and are planning to sell at local farm markets and such, and I wanted a way to assure peopel that the photos that I use when I tag them were really from the plant that they are purchasing! The nursery thing would be a fantastic idea though... although I think that it very likely could overwhelm some of the small growers as it is way too easy to want just about everything that you see on this forum!! Thanks again for all of the comments! Julie

I owe Linda the thanks for freeing up some of my pantry space. It was great talking to you last evening. Can't wait to hear what all you shred today. Peppi- DH and I are doing great. You would never know now that he was in a coma last summer. As for me, I had my last surgery on my neck wounds a couple of weeks ago and am on the mend finally. Hopefully later this PM I will have time to update on the trial over on conversations. Enjoy that FP Linda, Linda

EBharvey - I'm in Northern NJ (US) but I got one bloom about 2 weeks ago that was very pink with a little apricot only in the center. I have heard that Carding Mill will do this! I don't mind it, I like not knowing what color the bloom will be until it opens. Also, I did recently fertilize lightly so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Hi everyone. Carol - As Dave says it's highly unlikely you will grow any variegated seedlings. Based on what I have read and from my own experiences when I grew MEND seed, you can expect the foliage to be either grey/green like that of the seed parent of MEND which is Ae. lueddemanniana or a pinkish light brown. The flowers and berries will be the same as your Aechmea MEND. I was very new to growing brom seed when I planted my first lot of MEND seed. A friend had given me the seed and I didn't even know what MEND looked like at that stage so I went home and looked it up on the BCR and was very impressed when I saw it was a beautiful variegated plant. Having visions of producing hundreds of new variegated plants to add to my collection I planted the seed in a plastic take-away container and followed the same growing procedure I still use today. The seed was extremely fertile and within three weeks I had hundreds of tiny seedlings which I culled and kept just fifty to grow on. As they grew I was very disappointed to see there wasn't a single one showing any variegation and 50% just had dull grey/green foliage and the remainder had a pinkish light brown coloured foliage. They were very fast growing when compared with Neoregelias I had planted at the same time and although there wasn't any variegation showing I was still hopeful that the ones with the pinkish coloured foliage may produce something a bit different MEND seedlings at two years old It was in January when we had heat wave with temperatures in the low 40's C . I had a few adult plants badly burnt but fortunately the seedlings which were beneath shade cloth at this stage appeared undamaged. The weather stabilised and went back to normal and it was a couple of weeks after the heatwave while looking at my seedlings I noticed one of the MEND seedling had a trace of a beautiful red on one of the leaves similar to that of Ae. Alvarez. (see pic below) Aechmea 'Alvarez' This was quite exciting and I thought that maybe I was going to produce another of these nice coloured cultivars. Each day as I looked at the seedlings the red leaf became two, and then three, and then I saw two more plants showing hints of red on the leaves as well. In all there was a total of ten showing red on their leaves and I was over the moon with excitement. My MEND seedlings showing the red on the leaves - The two plants on the lower right show the two different coloured foliage to come from the seed about 50/50 I was so pleased with myself and each day I checked the progress of these plants. I decided I would give all the MEND seedling a closer check to see if I had any more with red showing through. As I was sorting through them you can imagine my shock when I touched one of the ones I had selected and the red centre just fell out completely; and then another and another. I then noticed that dreaded smell of rot and everyone of those plant had the centre rotted out. I hadn't bred some sort of new beautiful hybrid after all, as I found out later, the red leaves was sign of the plant rotting. It seems this is quite common when a plant rots, sometimes the leaves take on a bright colour not usually associated with that particular plant. After I got over the initial shock I realised it was probably all a result of the heatwave two weeks before. Because these were supposedly special plants, I had hung them higher than the rest to get more light and get maximum colour. When I looked carefully into the centre I found in each plant a dead half grown slug, and my reckoning is that these slugs got into the water away from the heat and as the temperature rose, the water got hot and more or less cooked the slugs. The hot water in the cup combined with a dead slug is what I imagine started the rot. I can only think that was the cause because the other seedlings at bench level were unaffected even though some of them had small slugs living in the cups as well. (I never worried about the slugs as they don't seem to eat the broms and just use them for somewhere sheltered to live) So that was the end of what I had imagined was to be the birth of some new beautifully coloured new Aechmea cultivars. All the best, Nev.