Gonzer questions here...he will know

Some folks like to leave the spent inflorescence on their plants, why, I don't know. Nasty critters like mealybug love hangin' out there. I cut sterile inflo's as soon as the flowers die. Plants that I want seed from stay. Caput is a slow pupper, so just hang in there.
It sounds like your 'Victoria' gave you a false read when you moved it to it's new enviroment. My experience (cuz I haven't read this anywhere) is that Tillandsias that have ionantha as a parent will often blush prematurely without flowering when moved. Victoria's other parent (brachycaulos) just happens to be another blusher so the odds of what happened to you doubled. Don't cut the pup away. Wait till the plant has at least 2-3 off-sets to gaurantee survival.

Thanks, gonzer! I don't know if my 'Victoria' blushed after I moved it - actually, it was beginning to blush when I bought it, and after moving it to my apartment the blush faded, and the leaves started to curl (not as they do when overly dry, but in a spiral, to the side).

Thanks for the advice!

Mike

Mike, a nicely grown Victoria can have the leaf tips recurve, while the rest of the leaf will stay, more or less, straight. If the whole leaf curls, no sweat. That's the brachycaulos coming through.

Yes, that's exactly what my Victoria has done - the leaf tips have a curve to them, but the rest of the leaf is more or less straight.

Something I have noticed growing indoors here is that the tills that seem to do well for me, besides being scurfy, have pseudo-bulbs (like the Caput) or at least a wider and more substantial base where the leaves come together (like the Victoria).

The more delicate tills do not do as well for me, but I tend to be less interested in them anyway.

Right now everything looks good, they get a lot of moving air and the right amount of light, I believe. This winter I think I may try to keep my tills with my orchids above a humidity tray. Do they do alright under florescent light?

Mike

I haven't had any experience with fluorescents Mike. I like the way you described some of your plants as "scurfy". This year I took about 80 different species of the drier-lovers and moved them out into almost direct sun. 50% shade cloth for the intense afternoon sun but they are doing well and most have that "scurfy" look. They color up a nice shade of gray with more natural highlights, not like plants straight from a greenhouse.

So, will you keep your dry-loving tills out there permanently, or is it a seasonal thing? My Victoria and Caput get "direct" sun almost all day long at my south-facing window, which is open day and night this time of year, though the window screen blocks a bit of light, though how much I am not certain. It can't be too terribly much because my light meter still maxes out at that window (5,000 f.c.). It blocks just enough light to keep my tills from frying, though I have had a few singed leaf-tips. The moving shadows of the plants above the tills break up the intensity somewhat as well. Mine are mounted, with small wire hooks attached to the mountings so I can hang them off of other plants (Rhipsalis, Selenicereus, etc) I have hanging in the window.

Once in a while, especially nights when the temp inside does not drop much, I stick my tills outside the window on a DIY window ledge shelf I built so they can get the moving and cooler air of the night. I wouldn't do it if I had to move 80 different species (!), but I just have a handful.

I would love to keep my tills outside but I think the sun is too strong out on that window ledge - the only plants I keep out there all season are some succulents and cacti.

This is somewhat unrelated, but I dropped by a local orchid greenhouse recently, and they had the largest Tillandsia I have ever seen - according to someone who works there, it is the largest species in the genus. This fellow also said that they had about 30 of these monsters that pupped off from the original plant. They have so many they don't know what to do with them! They offered me what I can only assume was a very good price to take one, but I live in an apartment so it is kind of out of the question, my guess is the thing was not full grown yet and 3.5' tall by 2 or 3' wide(?). Have any idea what it might have been? It was definitely a shade and moisture-loving till, whatever it was. Needless to say, I was impressed.

Till. australis is a very large plant as is T. rauhii. The plant in my "Am. Gothic" post has the largest inflorescence of any Till I've grown.
Many, many species can handle direct sun. The more heavily scaled (or whiter) the plant, the more sun it can take. I'll post some photos ASAP.

Cool, I really liked the "American Gothic" style pic btw, you deserve some credit for creativity!

That's interesting - rauhii must be named after Werner Rauh, eh? Lucky guy to get a big showy tillandsia named after him!

Mike

Mike, in your earlier post you said- "thirty of these monsters that pupped off from the original plant"... I'd suspect T. secunda var. vivipara. Check it out on the fcbs site and let me know what you think. I know our local botanical gardens grows it and that's good enough for me!
Paul

I am not sure if that is it, though it could be. I assumed probably incorrectly that there was one, "biggest" Tillandsia, but I suppose there might be a few species that all attain a large size. The guy at the orchid place said it was "the biggest". Oh well, I will just have to swing by there again some day soon. I wish they would allow pictures to be taken at this place, the owner gave me a nice little tour of the growing houses once, and midst all the crazy orchids he has mounds and mounds of Tillandsias. To my knowledge, the tills are not labeled, I guess they are just second fiddle to all the orchids...

Mike, that's strange that the you are not allowed to snap pics there, never heard that before. BTW, here's my T. rauhii with a Dypsis lutescens for scale.

{{gwi:478217}}

Apparently, in the past they allowed photographs to be taken, but some people used the pictures in ways the owner of the greenhouse (Orchids Ltd) did not like (photographers claiming they had grown the plants, etc, etc). I would like to be able to take pictures just so that I could remember what I saw in there on a particular day, not just plants but how they mount plants, etc. Now I just write everything down.

The rauhii looks quite a bit like the plant I saw in the orchid shop, primarily because of the broader, more spathe-like leaves and the dusty olive color. And it's big. Nice plant! The one I saw had several pups, and I think it was not full grown, though it must have been nearly. Nice palms too, gonzer.