We took a time at Mr. Panom's nursery till evening, then back to Bangkok and visited at the Tropical Gallery garden of Ban Kampu nursery.

{{gwi:484068}}
{{gwi:484069}}

A nice specimen of Aech. tayaoensis.
{{gwi:484071}}

With a group of Hohenbergia
{{gwi:484073}}

Bromelia humilis in bloom
{{gwi:484074}}

A nice variegated Aechmea
{{gwi:484075}}

And this is at my nursery...nothing much...just spiny things !!

{{gwi:484076}}
{{gwi:484077}}
{{gwi:484078}}
{{gwi:484079}}

An Othophytum corner
{{gwi:484080}}

Butterfly on my Dyckia marnier-lapostollei flower stalk which is setting seed.
{{gwi:444556}}

I am totally overwhelmed by your photographs! So many incredible broms on one page! What a wonderful feast for the eyes! Thank you so much for taking the time to share them with us.

Stephania, Let me add my thanks too, excellent photos and much appreciated. I would encourage everyone to post photos as often as possible. We would never have the opportunity to see these colorful bromeliads,except for you taking the time to post them. Great job ! Bob

Stephania, your "spiny things" are absolutely beautiful en masse like that! Is there anything more beautiful than a thick swath of bromeliads? Well, maybe those individual neo photos... Absolutely beautiful! Thanks!

I'm in shock at the colors of the first grouping of Neo's, Stephania. Exquisite coloring! If I were your friend from Germany, I'd have a mile-wide smile on my face. "nothing much" ???? I beg to differ with you. ;-)

Wow, excellent pictures, Stephania! I hope everyone will be inspired to post more like this (including me, as soon as my camera gets fixed!)

Maybe between us we can ID some of the ones you didn't get the names of. I don't recognize all of them, but the first variegated Neo. (picture #8) looks like 'Crayola', the bright orange one (#12) is 'Tangerine', the next one may be 'Scarlet Charlotte' and then 'Amazing Grace', of course. The variegated Aechmea after the bracteata in the second post is Ae. 'Ensign'. Can anyone else fill in the blanks?

One of these days I'd love to get an Ae. tayoensis. I remember when that was first auctioned off at the BSI conference in Orlando, there were only 4 known specimens in cultivation at that time, so I'm always happy to see people growing it. Hopefully someday the price will come down!

I wonder if you know Nongporn, who has a nursery in Bangkok. She comes to Hawaii quite often. I don't think she grows bromeliads, though.

Hey friends...Thanks to Photobucket too, that make me so easy to share you all my pix like this :) I hope you will do that for everyone too.

Lisa, I have no idea how rare or expensive of Aech. tayaoensis, but I know one of my good friend who live in the southern most part of Thailand, he has about ten plants of this species, yet with different clons. I don't surprise for another rare stuffs in his collection, as he is a best friend of Denis of Tropiflora and a good friend of Bill Baker also Dutch Vandervort. That why I can build up my xeric broms collection quite easy here.

I know Mrs. Nongporn, a nice lady. Yes she has a big nursery not far from Bangkok. I visited her nursery two time. Actually, she has a nice collection of Broms too, most are Neo. and Cryp., Next time I will take pix of her plants. Beyond the broms, Nongporn grows a ton of exotic palms and other rare ornamental plant.

Here some more pix of nice color Neo. of my brom tour.

{{gwi:484081}}
{{gwi:484082}}
{{gwi:484083}}
{{gwi:484085}}
{{gwi:484087}}
{{gwi:484089}}
{{gwi:484092}}

"...I got this one...how much?...200 bucks !!!!!... OH NO..."
{{gwi:484095}}

Was it really 200 bucks? Or maybe only 200 baht! That is a very nice Neo. It must be a hybrid of carcharodon 'Tiger', maybe crossed back to 'Hannibal Lecter'?

I guess Ae. tayoensis is not that expensive anymore. Michael's lists it at $75 but says "limited availability". That's still more than I want to pay, but it must not be too difficult to propagate if that many of them are around now. If your friend has several different clones then that probably means they were grown from seed (unless somebody collected that many different ones in the wild, which would surprise me). That is good to know because it means it may be possible to hybridize with it. What you would cross with it I don't know. It's so different from any other Aechmea, I'm not sure which ones it would be most closely related to.

It's been 10 years since the Orlando conference, but at that time they said that Selby Gardens had one, Wally Berg had one (which he entered and won Best of Show), I don't remember who had the third one, and the fourth one was put up for auction and won by Mrs. Angeles of the Philippines for some huge amount-- several hundred dollars, maybe a thousand. The story I heard was that after she took it back to the P.I. it died! I don't know if that's true or not, but it's obviously not so rare now.

This certainly ranks as one of the best photo postings here.

Many thanks.

Any plans to put these up in a web gallery?

Yeah so cool this is the Neoregelia's heaven sent.

"A nice variegated Aechmea" is called Aechmea orlandiana var. 'Ensign"

Hi...
I was visiting the web so i found your excellent and beautiful pics. And i want to visit Mr. Panom Nursery, Mrs. Nongporn and your nursery also. How's the procedure? Or can i contact you ?

Chanin and experts,

Kindly ID the neos from this thread? Thanks!
1.
{{gwi:484060}}

2.
{{gwi:484089}}

3.
{{gwi:484061}}

4.{{gwi:484062}}

Stephania it's great to see you posting more of your wonderful pictures again. How I enjoy the amazing nursery trips you take us on. I have only recently joined this group and just out of interest must ask this question, are you a professional photographer or nurseryman, or both? - Once again thanks very much for the great pics - All the best, Nev

Charmed life... what are S-man, those alternating leaf plants in the background next to the block wall? There is a group of three of them. Not colorful, but weird enough to catch my admiration-lol

I echo the comments made here that this is an amazing series of pics that nicely illustrate why many of us are such avid fans of this plant family. No suprise that the Thais can grow them to perfection when they put their minds to it.

I had a collected tayoensis offset offered to me last year as a favor from a friend, and idiotically declined it because I am short on space and was sure that I already had a wild seedling from a new locality! The latter plant, which germinated several years back from a stow-away seed in a batch of wild-collected live sphagnum from the Cordillera del Condor on the Ecuador-Perú border, has revealed itself to be a surprisingly lookalike Pitcairnia sp...a dead ringer in fact, but for its "soft" spines on the basal part of the leaves. In fact, it's superficially so close in appearance that I still find myself fingering its leaves from time to time and wondering. Obviously, one would expect the infl. architecture to vary quite a bit from one sp. to the other and I obviously hope that it turns out to be exceptional as a flowering plant, too. Coincidentally, this handsome brom also bears a resemblance to a rather enigmatic Pitcairnia pictured in another of Chanin's beautifully-illustrated threads; that on his tour of the bromeliad collection at Nong Nooch.

Dennis Cathcart assures me that tayoensis attains *immense* proportions in the wild...somewhat akin to our indigenous magdalenae, which can be a giant in lowland swamp forest, but on an even grander scale. I wonder why some of these really giant aechmeas, bromelias and brochinnias "dwarf" in cultivation.

I shamelessly admit that Chanin's beautifully-cultivated assemblage of spines inspired me to assemble a rather poor copy of his collection this year...although, after a period of uncertainty as to their ID, I am now convinced that I did beat him to the punch on Ortho. albopictum ;^)

Ciao,

J

For your info, Michael has smaller Ac tayoenisis at lesser price for sale. I noticed when I feed my tayoensis with slow release fertilisers, the leaves are healthy and broader.

Ok, this was before fertilising.
{{gwi:484103}}

This is after, note the leaf on the foreground of the picture and the newly emerging leaf.
{{gwi:484106}}

Chanin,

Superb shots ! The Aechmea bracteata variegated pictured with the pink flush over green/cream foliage was named and registered Aechmea 'Tritone' by me 6 years ago. I don't know it's origin though. There is also a rarer unnamed clone of Ae. bracteata variegated with plainer green/cream (or yellow) stripes which don't flush pink, no matter how intense the light.

Geoff.

Lyndi

#1 - Neo Crayola
#2 - Neo Jive
#3 - Neo Luna (variegated) grown in too little light. Look at some of the lower leaves - that dark colours is what Luna will get when grown in enough light.
#4 - Neo Luna albo-marginated. Also grown in low light conditions.

Japie

Japie,

Thanks! I am in the process of putting together an order so I am looking for good ones to order. Thanks again!

Hi - how could I get in touch with Mr. Panom when I am in Thailand? Does his nursery have a name?