Hi everyone.

yosemiteann - I don't know about Tillandsias, but I do know that various other brom's will often produce one or more pups as a survival response when the main plant has rotted or is dying for some other reason. It also happens sometimes when the plant is stressed by trauma or some other cause,

I imagine this is just Mother Nature's way of ensuring continuity of the species.

All the best, Nev.

Am I right in saying that Tillandsia are monocarpal and once they flower they die,then produce pups?

Well... they produce pups and then they eventually die. :P

Hi everyone.

Most bromeliads die after flowering and then produce pups;
but some (including some Tillandsias) die without producing pups in this way.

Some years ago I was fortunate enough to see one such
plant which was a “monster” Tillandsia in flower. It was a species called Tillandsia
rauhii and was almost three feet across and had a huge arching inflorescence about
seven feet in length. It had been grown by a friend of mine who although a fully-fledged
“bromeliad addict”, had an uncontrollable passion for Tillandsias.

She told me it had taken just over twenty years for her plant
to flower from when she got it as a small “seed grown” plant. Although when these
plants were young they often produced many
basal adventitious pups (Often called “grass pups” or “hair pups”), they didn’t
produce the usual type of pup we usually see after plants have flowered. My friend
said the most common way to reproduce these plants was by seed and gave me some
to try.

I was surprised at how easily they germinated and had
reached a height of about one eighth of an inch after six months. But there they
stopped; and after two years were still only just under three eights of an inch
tall.

Normally I’m a pretty patient bloke, but not knowing much
about these plants, I lost interest when I saw how slow they were growing and suspected
it was something I was doing wrong so I decided to give them to a younger
friend of mine who was a keen Tillandsia fancier. I felt much better when after
about six months he told me they still hadn’t grown any larger and I realized my
growing technique hadn’t been the problem and it was probably a characteristic
of the particular species causing such slow growth.

Anyway the next year we had a very cold winter, and as my
friend lived further south he suffered the consequences more than I did and
consequently all of these little seedlings succumbed to the excessive cold, so
I guess I’ll never know how long it would have taken us to grow some of these seedlings
into the magnificent plants they could have been.

I did read an article about “wild collected plants” which
said, “Three of the plants of Tillandsia rauhii collected in 1956 began to
develop their inflorescences in late 1989 and reached full bloom in January
1990, so it seems it is a very slow growing plant.

I seem to remember on this very forum some years ago, one
of our current members spoke of flowering Till. Rauhii so maybe he would like
to add a bit more about his own experiences with this plant.

Below are a couple of sites which have some good pictures
of this particular plant for anyone interested:

http://www.bromeliad.org.au/pictures/Tillandsia/rauhii.htm

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tillandsia_rauhii#/media/File:Tillandsia_rauhii_BotGardBln08112010C.JPG

All the best, Nev.