Hi everyone.

Carol - Your plants looks very similar to my Neo. 'Pink Sensation' except for the white spotting. Mine doesn't have any spotting at all, but I have noticed that this plant is sometimes a little bit variable and this is apparent in the pictures on the BCR registration entry where a couple of plants show a colour break and if you look very closely at the last picture there is some very faint spotting visible on it as well. See: http://registry.bsi.org/?genus=NEOREGELIA&id=6362#6362 

I should comment though on picture number two which looks more red than pink, but I think this is mainly due to many of the older pictures being pre-digital and taken on film with sometimes inaccurate colours especially with reds and pinks which are always difficult to capture accurately.

Neoregelia 'Pink Sensation'

All the best, Nev.

Nev,

Thank you so much for the reply and photo. Also, thanks for the link. It was interesting to see the photos at BCR and the incredible variation from one to the next. But then, I've seen that in my own plants. I always take photos when I first purchase and then again as time goes on. Sometimes it's hard to believe it is the same plant!

This nursery had just received a big shipment of neos and, of course, I was drooling over them all. They had several of the white-spotted pinks and all looked just the same as the one in my photo. There were also some solid pinks that looked very much like your Pink Sensation, and then some pink striped ones that got my attention, too, because I had never seen them before. None of them had name tags. (This nursery's broms are never tagged with names.)

The striped one may be just a more juvenile form of the one pictured just above it?

I don't know. They had four of each: solid pink, spotted, and striped. So it seemed as if they were different cultivars. The names don't really matter a whole lot to me because I don't sell. They're just for my yard. But when people want to trade, they want to know the names.

Got these (below) in a big 3-gallon pot back last fall. I think there were 15 broms in this pot, including all pups, of course.

Don't know the name of that one, either. Same nursery. It's a double-edged sword at that nursery: they have the best selection and the worst (read "no") labeling. And there's not a lot from which to choose in Jacksonville, anyway. Regardless of nursery or big box store, Guz's are in far more in abundance than Neos. I think almost no one in Jax, except for a few really experienced gardeners, messes with potting or pups on either. The guz's, especially, are purchased for entryway decorations and then tossed. There is no Brom Society in Jacksonville (the closest one is about a two-hour drive) and no one to trade with here, either.

Ok, back on track. And there there's this brom. This one came from Lowes where it did have a label: Cotton Candy. It's much paler/lighter pink than the other ones in my post. It looks a lot like the first and last photos on the BCR link, especially the last one. I've been noticing the leaves turning a more bronzy/avocado green (which I don't especially like. I prefer a grass green color. No bronze-green for me, thanks, if I can have my choice.) On many of my broms that is happening and I'm pretty sure it is from too much sun. Still waiting for most of my trees to leaf out and provide the shade I need to get the colors the way I like on my broms. Right now, they're getting a lot of sun.

Here's a photo from when I bought it (photo is sideways - sorry!):

And how it looks now:

Thanks for all of your help, Nev. I always enjoy reading your posts. No matter what is going on with a brom, one feels better about it after reading your post. :)

Carol

I stumbled across a very similar looking neo called 'Fiesta'

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Neoregelia-Fiesta-/172622618438?hash=item28311c1f46:g:lvIAAOSwB-1Y8Au2

Carol

Hi everyone.

Carol – Once you start getting into hybrids, there can be
many “look-alikes” from the same crossing. Although technically, all of the
hybrids should differ in some way there are often cases where they look so similar
it’s near impossible to tell them apart. It all depends on the dominant gene
and how much it influences the progeny. Some plants can be so similar they would
need DNA testing to tell them apart.

Very often the plants we see are the “pick of the crop” so
to speak, and are the ones from a grex that have been selected for registering.
However there are often many, many more
in that same grex which to the untrained eye will appear the same and it’s not
until we put the plants side by side that we can really see the difference.

Likewise you may have several different crosses which have a
common seed or pollen parent and in these cases if the parent is dominant enough,
you will often see progeny with similar traits, even though they are from a
different cross.

A good example of this is Neoregelia ‘Charm’; this has over
40 crosses registered to it using various other plants as breeding partners,
but if you like to wade through all of the pictures of these crosses, you will
see similarities of Charm in many of them.

See: http://registry.bsi.org/?fields=Parents&id=10541&search=charm The first one in the list is Neo. ‘Aaron
Smythe’ which has no resemblance to ‘Charm’, but as you scroll through the
remaining pictures you will see what I mean with the resemblance to Neo. ‘Charm’
very obvious in many other plants.

If you go to: http://registry.bsi.org/?genus=NEOREGELIA&id=3545#3545 for a picture of Neo. ‘Charm’ for comparison,
you will observe that even the plants in these pictures vary slightly to each
other.

Another interesting example is Neo. ‘Jewellery’ Shop and if
you look at the BCR entry for this registration at http://registry.bsi.org/?genus=NEOREGELIA&id=5105#5105
you will see many variations in the
pictures displayed here also.

There are just so many variables that have a bearing on the
final outcome. We should also consider it has to do with the quality of the
photo, the time of the day it was taken and the available light at the time. It
also has to do with the maturity of the plant; because as we know, plants will
change in colour as they progress through the various stages toward maturity, and
the number of possible variations can be likened to the number of “prickles on
a porcupine”.

I apologise; I’m starting to rave on as usual, but the point
I’m trying to make (in a very round-about way) is that many Neo hybrids can
look very similar without being the same plant and likewise many examples of
the same plant can look different to each other.

I should finish now as I’m starting to confuse myself!

All the best, Nev.

I now believe this to be Neoregelia 'Treasure Chest', also frequently labeled in error as 'Monet' as noted in the BSI Registry.

Carol