I've recently seen these white-bloomed guzmania broms, too. I don't know the name, but they sure are pretty! They were pricey, so I haven't bought one yet. I love yours!

Carol in Jacksonville

Well, thanks for identifying it as a Guzmania!

Hi everyone.

aoebhil - As Carol
says, your plant is a Guzmania but as for a varietal name, I’m sorry I can’t
help you. I don’t know about plant retailers in your area, but here in
Australia Guzmanias are available in a multitude of colours from the various
large department type stores, nurseries and markets.

They are imported into Australia from the large
distributers in Belgium and Holland as tissue cultured plants (Mass produced)
in flasks where they are grown on by professional growers here until they reach
adulthood when they are treated with ethylene gas to induce flowering so masses
will all be flowering at the same time for gifts for specific markets such as
Mother’s Day, Christmas, Easter etc.

Some of them are quite beautiful and although the multi
coloured ones like yours aren’t all that common at present, they do range in
colours from the softest pinks and mauves through to very strong reds and
purples as well as apricot orange and yellow colours

It seems that more has been done with Guzmanias,
particularly in Belgium and Holland as they seem to have cornered the European
flower trade where they take the place of cut flowers, and are produced with
the idea of being “binned” when finished flowering and a new plant
purchased.

They definitely do fulfill this purpose as
they make a wonderful showpiece in the home sometimes for several months, and
dollar for dollar, are a much better financial proposition than buying cut
flowers which only last for a couple of weeks (if you are lucky).

I find with the ones sold here in Australia for some
reason they usually only ever have a generic name on them i.e. “Bromeliad” and
quite often it is difficult to track down a correct ID unless you can look at
the sites of the large producers such as: "Corn Bak B. V." Netherlands http://www.bromelia.com/ or "Deroose Plants" Belgium http://www.derooseplants.com/ where you may be lucky enough to see a
catalogue with your plant pictured.

Over the past few years I have bought a few for inside
colour in our home and they do this job very well and often stay in colour for ages.

Below are three of these I've purchased previously:

All the best, Nev.

You're welcome. It is possibly Guz. 'Snowball', shown as 'White Snowball' on this vendor's page. I'll leave it to others here who are far more experienced than me to give a definitive answer.

Carol

Hi everyone.

Carol - You're "spot on" with your ID for aoebhil's plant; it looks like it is Guzmania 'Snowball' and is registered as such on the Bromeliad Society International's Cultivar RegisterSee: http://registry.bsi.org/?genus=GUZMANIA&id=2730#2730

Don't be too bothered with the slight differences in the bract colour because as we all know these can vary slightly from plant to plant depending on how much light it was grown under.

It was a Deroose hybrid as I suspected, with origins in Belgium and as such would have been grown under premium conditions in their massive automatic temperature and light controlled green houses when the picture for registration was taken and this could explain the slight variation in colour.

I also see that Deroose now have branches in the United States and China as well as Europe, so you could possibly be seeing many more of these lovely hybrids available in the future.

All the best, Nev.

I found an identification database that had Snowball and many more. I think Snow ball is too white! I found another hybrid also by Deroose, that looks far more like my plant (and both photos were taken by Deroose) that is Guzmania "Kay". My sister also bought a plant that needs id. I am sure it is another Deroose hybrid! I am going to send a photo of it

Here is that photo

It seems slightly distorted on my phone...fatter and shorter than in the original photo

Hi everyone.

aoebhil - Would you care to share the URL of the identification database you found as it might come in very handy for us in the future when others are trying to ID plants.

All the best, Nev.

http://fcbs.org/pictures/Johnson.htm

It it is a section that is better than going directly to the data base. If you go directly it lists them all in alphabetical order and sorts by page #. I found it very unwieldy. This section sorts by Genus. If you go to the left of the article, you will see a list of this couple's bromeliads. Scroll all the way to the bottom and it will say " Return to Genus List". There, you can click on any genus and it will list the species, then it will list the hybrids. Click on any listing and it will open the database info on that particular bromeliad (opens to the right of the list at the top of the page)

if you would rather scroll through all the bromeliads, which there are any where from 30 to over 300 varieties per genus, go to fcbs.org and the info and pics will fill the whole page, and the next page, etc. All the data will be already open, pictures and all.

Depends entirely how you prefer to search.