they do produce offsoots in the form of grass pups

Yeah, they are now classified as alcantarea rather than vriesea though. There was a pretty good post a while back talking about how to propagate with the grass pups, so try searching with alcantarea. They also produce a lot of seed. I think a lot of volunteer selfing without human help. Others will know more. Here is a picture of grass pups starting to form on my imperialis.
-andy

{{gwi:470277}}

Hi Bruce,
Welcome to our forum and I hope you find it as interesting as I did, and become a regular visitor.

I can't help much with your question, but I think the post Andy was referring to was the one posted by Rick on the 20 Dec 2008 under the title of "Alantarea Grass Pups".

All the best, Nev.

This past season I did have a few Alcantarea flower, & all have produced a good amount of seed without any help from me. Alcantarea imperialis will produce grass pups, but generally do not produce normal pups after the mother plant flowers. So if you have a good clone, do remove the grass pups to propagate the plant.

Cheers, Andrew.

I agree with Andrew that it's not likely to pup after flowering. Different clones of A. imperialis will vary in how heavily they produce the grass pups, but it seems to be primarily a function of immature plants. It is not unusual to remove one tiny pup and see an even smaller one already forming on it, so you can propagate a lot of them when they're still quite young, but once the plant starts to mature, that usually stops.

It should be self-fertile and you probably won't need to hand-pollinate it, but if you want to try anyway, check the photo in the link below. The 6 long thingies with pollen on the end of them are the stamens (the part that actually holds the pollen is the anther), and the one with the kind of triangular spongey-looking bit at the end (seen against the blue sky in the pic) is the pistil (the receptive part is the stigma). Since they're so long and flexible, it should be easy to just brush one or more anthers against the stigma. I think Alcantareas are receptive around the same time as most broms, i.e. about mid-morning (9:00 or 10:00ish), but this may vary somewhat in different locations and during different seasons.

Good luck, but be prepared for the seeds to grow verrrry slooooowwly. ;-)

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:470276}}

Ha ha, thanks Nev. I was running out the door this morning and chose to take and post the picture rather than looking for the link. I was going to take a picture of the pup I removed last year that has a grass pup on that one now...but then looking at the old post again and see that there are better examples in that post.

Here is a link that might be useful: Grass pup post

Hi Bruce and all, not much to add, though what lisaclv put in her post, is pretty comprehensive.
Only from my experience the Alcantarea are night flowering in most cases and hence best time to hand pollinate I found was, from 6pm to midnight and hand pollinating gives far more seed than wind, insect pollination etc.,
hope this helps. allan

Allan, they bloom at night where you are? The foliage Vrieseas are night-bloomers here, as are the Werauhias, but I've always seen the Alcantareas open during the day. I did a couple of crosses involving some other species several years ago. I don't remember the exact time of day I did the pollination, but it had to be during daylight hours.

Hi everyone,
Although I don't grow Alcantareas, I would like to add this info. at the request of a friend who saw this post and thought this may be of interest to the Alcantarea growers.

She says ....... "I was just browsing the Garden Web and came across the question regarding whether or not regular pups will form on Alcantarea imperialis.

Well, my regular imperialis (green) gave at least half a dozen pups after she had flowered. I allowed the mother plant to kind of 'lean on the ground' for a couple of years and she put out some nice pups during that time. In fact I have three quite large ones growing now, some small ones I didn't plant out in the ground at the same time, and the one which I gave to Sharyn a couple of years ago is coming along just beautifully.

Anyway, I thought I would pass on my bits of information to you just in case you wanted to pass it on to the fellow who made the inquiry"

There was also an attachment of three articles of which she says ....... "All three of these articles were in earlier Newslinks, the shorter ones in January 1997 and the other around 2002".

She says of one of the articles ...... "The shorter article I have attached I thought was interesting where the gentleman from Florida was looking at 30 years to flowering, while the Nordens, who live in Strathfield, had theirs up and blooming in a little over 6 years"

All the best, Nev.

P.S. For those who don't know, "Newslink" is our Illawarra Bromeliad Society bi-monthly newsletter, and Strathfield is a suburb of Sydney.

My V.imp. bloomed several years ago, giving me a dozen grass pups and one pup that grew normally. The grass pups take too long to attain any functional size IMHO.

Nev,

I can't believe you don't have at least one Alcantarea!!

Can you forward though to me the attachments you were talking about?

I can't find anything online before 2004 about the Illawarra Newslinks - I have read some of the previous articles and have enjoyed them.

Thanks,

Rick

Hi Rick,
When I said I don't grow Alcantareas, I meant I don't grow any adult Alcantareas.

I have quite a few seedlings, but I doubt if I'll be around when they reach adulthood at the rate the're going (they're only six months old).

All the best, Nev.

Hi All,

Thanks so much for the useful information. The bloom spike is truly "imperial" ! I shall try to post a picture of it later.