Nothing ventured ..nothing gained

So you actually want advice now, Nick? Gee, I thought you were just having fun and didn't want anyone with a critical eye to rain on your parade! ;-)

Well, the first rule is always "follow your heart". I can't get too jazzed about any of those combinations, but if the idea excites you, then by all means try it! At the very least you'll learn something, and it may be that none of those things is compatible with Ae. bracteata. Or you may get something interesting, who knows?

At any rate, here are my thoughts for whatever they're worth. First, I don't think bracteata's inflorescence has any qualities that will improve on the flower of any other Aechmea, or on a Neo either. There's just not much going on there except a few smallish red scape bracts, and Neos will pull even the biggest, showiest Aechmea flower back into a tight little cluster. So basically what you're looking at as its strongest positive attribute is the foliage. Looked at from that perspective, you'd want to choose a mate that also has some good foliar traits to bring to the mix, otherwise what's the point? You'd just end up with something that wasn't as nice as either parent, and had a homely flower to boot.

So, going over the list of possible matches you mention, what could improve on bracteata's foliage? If your clone of fendleri is one with a reddish tinge to the foliage, that could intensify bracteata's red coloration, as it often does in a cross. I've never worked with a green-leafed clone of it, so I don't know how much of bracteata's red it would pick up. Might be worth a try. Similarly, if your blanchetiana is the one with orange foliage, I think you might stand a better chance of getting a strong red in some of the offspring, although even blanchetiana 'Orange' doesn't pass its foliage color on nearly as often as the rosy-leafed fendleri does. I don't have Ae. amicorum so I can't tell you much about that, but I'm not seeing much in the index picture that would make me think you might get an improvement on either plant.

As for the Neos, I think I'd avoid correia-araujoi since it has its own issues. It's not very good at passing on strong foliage patterns on its own-- if you want that you have to back it up with another Neo that has a bolder color scheme. Neo cruenta Rubra, on the other hand, could be interesting. Again, it often won't pass on the red, but occasionally it does, and the addition of bigger spines and a more urn-shaped rosette could be attractive. It's kind of dull-textured, though. I think you'd have even better luck if you put the pollen onto Dexter's Pride or something like that. It seems to be more reliable at passing the color along and doesn't really have any detracting qualities. That could actually be quite nice if it took.

Just some things to think about, but in the end you're going to do what you're going to do, so go ahead and experiment!

Lisa, thanks for your thoughts. I'm still such a beginner at this that I do tend to just try anything that I have, which isn't much. If I had to wait for an ideal cross, I'd probably still be waiting to do my first cross. If you were to write down everything you know about hybridizing and I read and understood it, I'd still be stuck with the plants that I have.

I can imagine that some things I want in a plant probably don't interest you. For example, I really like Nids, Neos and Aechmeas that have stiff upright leaves. I get regular blows and I dislike having twisted and bent leaves. But mostly, I like bromeliads with an upright form.

I don't know if crossing a floppy leafed plant with a stiff leafed bracteata or kuntzeana is going to stiffen them up. Until somebody tells me the answer I'm going to just go ahead and try to figure that out myself. One of my xNeomea, rubens x marmorata clone?, has a nice upright form and good stiffness from thick leaves but then neither parent would be considered floppy leafed.

I realize that a neo pulls down an aechmea's flower but I tend to look at it the other way, an aechmea pulls up a neo's flower and in my mind that's just fine. A Neo inflorescence is pretty dull. I almost wish they didn't bother. For me, anything that improves on that is just fine. I've also decided to not do anymore Neo x Neo crosses. There are so many decent Neos that there isn't any feature that I want that I can't easily get.

I used to not like amicorum but now I find that it fits perfectly into my landscape in small amounts. It does have decently stiff leaves and the big bright red berries are awesome. The bromdex pictues aren't very revealing. So sticking an amicorum with it's yellow cast in among a bunch of red, pink, black and green aechmeas and neos makes a nice contrast that I find I like, though I certainly wouldn't want a stand alone group of amicorum. However, I'd like to add some decent spines to amicorum. If I could get some big dark spines to go with the yellow leaves, I think that would be pretty cool. I don't know if the red berries are going to be lost in a cross so I certainly don't have a lot of faith in this, but I'd give it a try if nothing better comes along.

A decent collection of cold hardy bromeliads is also something I'm interested in. Hopefully, I won't be the one testing out their cold tolerance, but there is a good demand for hardy bromeliads among my friends and I don't mind trying to make something new for people to try.