Hi I saw your posting looking for neoregelia liliputiana. I don't have that one, but do have neoregelia fireball which has the same mound-forming habit and leaves become quite burgundy when grown in full sun. If you are interested in trading for this I can send you several pups. I would be interested in tradinf for starts of orchid cactus, any color. Please let me know if you would like to trade. Send me an e-mail. Thank you. Have a nice day... cocomo at GW

I have a feeling we're going to get a lot of contradictory answers here, because it really does depend on growing conditions, among other things. Andrew, I would have said just the opposite of you! Fosperior Perfection NEVER pups for me, mainly because in all the years I've grown it I've never seen it bloom. The only way I've ever been able to propagate it is to kill the meristem with a screwdriver. Then it will give quite a few pups, but the amount of pups is directly related to how big the plant is when I screw it. N. pauciflora, on the other hand, pups like crazy-- both the large and small forms. Go figure. My general feeling is that the stoloniferous types tend to be the best puppers. Fireball, compacta, ampullacea, olens, etc., and many of their hybrids too. Maybe that's just an illusion because they tend to pup earlier. I've never done a pup count on any particular variety to test it out. How many pups you can get will depend on several factors. As mentioned before, the more mature the mother is when she blooms, the more pups she can support because there is simply more leaf mass there to produce food for them. Heavy fertilization can have the same effect. If you leave them attached, however, she'll reach her limit and just take care of those. On the other hand, if you remove them as soon as they're big enough to take off, Mama will keep pumping them out until she keels over. This is where growing conditions figures into it. In more temperate regions, not only do broms grow slower, the seasonal change will often force them into bloom before they've had a chance to put on much size. In the tropics we get pretty even growth year-round, and some varieties rarely if ever bloom. Neo. Fireball is one of these, and it's also one that doesn't have to bloom in order to pup, so what this means is that a single mother plant can just keep producing pup after pup, and as long as you keep removing them she'll continue to do it. I've seen them form tall stalks with 10-15 stubs where pups have been removed over time, but if you don't take them off, then you'll only get one or two.

I discovered this adorable plant recently and it's found it's way into my heart. I don't have many mini's but I think I'm gonna get more. They just make me smile... I haven't found any pictures that truly do it justice and I can provide some if anyone wants any. Neoregelia 'Mo Peppa Please' cv. of 'Angel Face' X ampullacea 'Midget' Hybridizer: Jim Irvin BSI reg. #4500

Madabouteu - i had considered the pothos you mentioned, but it gets out of control and invades the hedges below the balcony fairly easily. The syngonium is an interesting idea, i suspect it may have similar issues since it's a class 1 invasive here... i don't want to cause any problems for the landscape crews. :) Bihai - interesting ideas! As an orchid lover, i am enamored of the idea to use epidendrums, but don't they need lots of fertilizer, whereas the Neos with the colored foliage aren't supposed to be fertilized at all, are they? I ~really~ like the miniature elephant ears idea, and the type you mentioned are very cute but i've never seen them available locally. What i do have is a nice alocasia 'Polly'. Of course, if i set it outside with our current temps it will probably go dormant... but it would look great in summer. Maybe i'll tuck some cool season annuals into the space for now and plant the alocasia in there in a few months. Thanks for the ideas so far, they've definitely got me thinking about things i hadn't considered. Any further ideas are welcome. :)