Hi Nancy,

It literally grows like a weed in many parts of the country. Mine got only a fifth as large as the one pictured below - it still took over the pot it was in quite easily. If you can keep it warm and give it some sun, stand back and watch it grow.
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Hi Jeff!
I haven't bought one yet, but am in love with the way it mounds. It would make awesome hair in a head pot or chia pot, wouldn't it? Is it a sturdy or delicate plant?

Nancy

O craaaaap. Another one to add to my wish list 0_o LOL!!
Is it just me or has anyone else ended up searching out & collecting more plants because of GW plant porn?

I'll say one thing, my collection has grown into quite an interesting menagerie since I started again this summer with GW. Thanks guys =)

Antoinette

Hi Antoinette,

I have been heavily influenced by GW plant porn, for sure! I never would have known what some plants were or that they even existed before coming to this site. I actually saw this plant at a show and had to know what it was....now that I've moved and started to settle in, I'm thinking that this plant might make a nice addition to the "family"! :)

Nancy

Mine's still a baby really, but here it is about 16 months ago.

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And today in the same pot.

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I love this one. It's kind of strange that it gets lumped in with succulents more often than its fellow bromeliads, but I guess it does act like a succulent. This is one of the most tolerant plants I own. I water it whenever the other succulents get watered and it never seems to look any different. It just slowly multiplies until one day you realize that the pot is beginning to disappear beneath its spiny rosettes. It's also oddly pleasing to gently lay your hand over it, like laying on a bed of nails.

-Chris

Must. Have. One.
It's orderly habit is uber-attractive!

"It's also oddly pleasing to gently lay your hand over it, like laying on a bed of nails."

It's pokey isn't it, lol. There's one for sale on ebay but I'm over my limit a bit this month on plants, so I'm holding out.

Can you pull off a pup (if that's what it is) and pot up separately? They look like a bagillion teeny little pineapple tops. I bet they have a hive brain, lol.

After I settle in my 3 new plants arriving in the mail (thanks GW enablers) this weekend, I'm going to have to secure one of these bad boys.

@ Nancy, me tooo!!! It started with a pic of an Adenium, and it's been all downhill from there -_o
I keep a sticky note on my desktop & when I see a plant that I can't get out of my head, I add it to the list. So far, Euphorbia caput-medusae & this little beauty are on my list for next month.

After that, I'll cool it for awhile. I hope. Ha.

Antoinette

Chris,

It's gorgeous! I have to get myself one of these! Hmm, Christmas is coming, the hubby always needs gift ideas for me......
Thanks for sharing the photos.
So far, it seems it's all thumb's up for this plant!

Nancy

"Can you pull off a pup (if that's what it is) and pot up separately?"

I'm sure that's how my plant came to me. If you were repotting, it would be really easy to pull a few heads off of an edge.

I'm still not sure what to do with mine in the long term. Put it in a wide shallow pot? Mount it on a slab of rock? Or just leave it in its tiny pot and let it grow into a mound of its own making.

-Chris

OOoo. Mounted on a slab of rock sounds like it would be a fantastic way to feature this guy. Or a large piece of lace rock, like this:

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Start a few in a hole or 2 and allow it to take over.

Hi Chris,

Wide shallow pot (TC), more a bowl - it will double in growth in a year given good conditions. I've thought the same thing about the bed of nails, though in a charmingly harsh way.

Hiya Antoinette,

I had to have an Agave pygmae 'Dragon Toes'. I traced down the nursery, who gave me list of who they sold them to, and LA nursery having just one was found, the plant was purchased, and a female acquaintance on another forum living in Los Angeles completely served my mania request on the forum, picked it up and mailed it to me - it's growing as we speak. She in turn has some thank you agave pups growing for her - that's also a thrill.

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I bid on the deutterocohnia listed in ebay and won the auction. I bid high before I left for work this morning knowing that there would be some action on bidding at the very end of the auction. It ended up with 6 bids. The cluster being sent is 3.5 inches wide. I'm thinking about going with a wide shallow bowl type pot as mentioned above. I'm wondering about what everyone's thoughts are about watering when the plant eventually is hanging over the edges of the pot. Could a watering can with a long thin spout be used or would I set it in a pan of water ?

The roots will extend throughout the old decomposing leaves, so you want to water the whole plant mass. If it were to grow large enough, a tiny pot may become inconsequential and could actually be removed so that there wouldn't be a pot to water, just the plant itself.

-Chris

Thanks Chris, this is really interesting. You're saying that inside the mound there are decomposing leaves with roots extending through it and that the whole plant mass has to be watered. Do you have a special way you water your plant ? Could one use a sprayer attached to a kitchen sink ? I'm assuming that water has to go through the soil and drain out as well ? One last question... How often do you water your plant and do you fertilize it ? Do you let the soil dry between watering ? Thanks very much for your help.

Mike

Somewhere I remember seeing a photo of one of these cut in half, but I can't find it now. Yes, they basically create their own soil from the dead plants that are left behind as now ones grow outwards. I just water the entire plant surface until water drains out. They get watered whenever my other succulents do, every other day during midsummer and as little as once every couple weeks during our cloudy winters. I typically fertilize my plants every time I water, but I'm sure that's not necessary. It's just more convenient for me to fertilize lightly every time rather than try to remember when I last did it. It's really a very tolerant plant, and I've never had a problem with it.

-Chris

Thanks again for your help Chris, I also already water/fertilize the way that you do. I found a bowl type shallow clay pot amongst my pot stash in the garage so I'm all set. I'm anxious to get the plant so I can start watching it grow.

My plant arrived in the mail today. Nice and healthy looking with a great set of roots. All potted up and ready to go. Does anyone have any special tips for growing ? Mike
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Awesome plant ! Anyone seen one in flower? That must be something!

I've never seen the flowers in person but this is a picture from the Internet. I love the green color and the way they hang down. Mike
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Green is a rare colour in flowers.

The flowers aren't really that noticeable except up close, and while I've seen some thriving examples of this plant growing in the botanic garden here in Berkeley and also San francisco, in my experience it is not the easiest plant to get to thrive. I've had it growing well enough several times in containers, and then lost it to rot. Small divisions are also not the easiest things to get rooted if grown outdoors without a greenhouse, and they only seem to root if done during the warmer months. Larger denser clumps I've had have also had to battle with insiduous Oxalis corniculata, the common weedy oxalis that seems to be everywhere in container plants here in California, is nearly impossible to keep apart from the Deuterocohnia.

In sum, I've given up trying to grow this particular bromeliad, although it seems to thrive with next to no care in the new desert section up the hill at the UC Berkeley Botanic Garden with next to no care. I've killed them at least a dozen times, and I suspect it prefers it warmer and sunnier than what I've been giving it, and I don't seem in sync with its watering preferences. Some plants one just shouldn't keep on trying to torture, and this is one of those for me. Longest lasting plant for me lasted 5 years, then got infested with Oxalis and started to decline. Attempting to root divisions in mid summer, killed them all off within months. Maybe with a greenhouse and warmer conditions than my 55 degree F nights in summer they would do better.

David, it sounds like you may need a more porous soil for this one. Mine grows in a mix of pumice, granite, and Turface. No organics or fine material whatsoever.

(This is not Deuterocohnia, but the soil is the same.)
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It never sits in soggy soil with a mix like this, and doesn't seem to mind drying out at all. Maybe a gritty, inorganic soil suits this one best.

Mike, I can't tell what's under that top dressing, but you may want to avoid using anything too water retentive, especially in a pot that big.

-Chris

here is a larger plant outdoors in flower... you have to look sort of hard, but there are a number of greenish-yellow flowers on this plant

here's a closer shot

and for those that are tired of green plants, Deuterocohnia lorentziana is a nice alternative

Beautiful plants lzrddr.. Thanks for posting the pics. Mike

I'm a bit late to this forum, but it is a very cool plant. I saw it in the desert in southern Bolivia five years ago and just spotted a small specimen growing in the US Botanic Garden last week.

It's fascinating in the wild - huge mounds (biggest were 20' x 5') on the sides of protected crevices in rock outcroppings in the Atacama - pretty much anywhere that will funnel water to it. It was the only vegetation visible for miles up and down this valley; the area gets less than 2 cm of rain per year, it's at 12,000'-14,000', it's always windy, and the soil away from the rocks is just abrasive volcanic ash. This plant's a real survivor.

Geoff,

Those are some nice plants - I'd welcome repotting them, as long as I wear a welding suit. That other Deut. is nice too - I like the colour.

Adam,

Let's see pictures of them, please. Habitat plants are where it's at, literally.

Reggie,

That plant would grow so well for you, it'd be the size of a sheep in a few years.

I stand corrected - there were a (very) few other plants there, but D. brevifolia was hands-down the dominant species. I attached a pic of one of the big mounds. I think those rocks are about 10'-15' tall.

That picture is really, really hard to comprehend properly. Holy Toledo, plant lava.

Adam, could you park that pic at a photo-sharing site? I'd sure like to share it at another C&S site (Xeric World), where a discussion of this plant is ongoing, but no one, and I mean no one, has seen a picture like that.

This post was edited by cactusmcharris on Thu, Feb 13, 14 at 20:29

No problem - put some in a Google+ album.

-Kevin

Here is a link that might be useful: pics of D. brevifolia

Kevin, thanks very much - those are just out of this world. Like sausage, here's a link.

Here is a link that might be useful: No shortage of a short leaf

Hi all - how long will it take this little one (pic below) before it fills out like the one by penfold2 in the October 2012 post above?

Also, I think the last few posts above were of a different plant altogether. It's Azorella compacta (llareta) and it's extremely rare and found only high in the Andes grasslands, from what I read, starting from the link above. What a plant!

I got mine in April of 2009 (I keep records of all my plants :), and it was about the same size as yours if I remember correctly. But I'm in MN, and we have a shorter growing season than most, so you may get faster growth depending on your conditions. Currently mine has grown to the point that it's very difficult to pick up. The pot is almost entirely enveloped by the plant.

-Chris

Penfold2, very encouraging news. Sounds like a good grower after all. Mine came with a tag that says 'grows very slowly' so I wasn't sure. Is it possible to post a current photo of your awesome plant another 3 years on?

(I try to keep such records of my plants but I keep misplacing the notepad. So I've now started to use Microsoft Onenote. Best thing ever! :))

They seem to grow exponentially. Since each rosette multiplies into new ones, the more rosettes you have, the faster they multiply. It may seem slow growing at first, but will pick up speed as it grows. Here's mine today.

-Chris

Absolutely awesome m, Chris. Well done. Do they have tap roots and what size is that pot? I'll try to repot that into the right final pot so I won't have to disturb it too much while it grows.

Thanks! The pot is pretty small, just 4"x2.5". I've never repotted it to see what the roots look like within the soil, but I think the pot becomes kind of irrelevant after a while. Many bromeliads can absorb water directly through their leaves, plus the old dead leaves which you can see on the underside of my plant form a sort of soil that can hold water for some time. It's a good idea to think about how you want to display and move it in the future, though.

-Chris

Chris,

That's looking fantastic, and it's totally ready for a repot (or not). I'd bet it would double in size in a year or two if it got a nice big bulb-pan for a new home and some fresh soil. Fertilize with a weak solution often and stand back, it will turn into an even larger-and-lovelier beast.

I've seen people grow these mounted on rock, or even free-standing, but do they benefit a lot from soil? Like I said, I've never repotted it to check out the roots, but the pot does feel pretty well anchored in place. Maybe I'll have to think about upgrading to that bulb pan this spring.

-Chris

In saw anyone comes across this thread mountaincrest nursery in Northern California has a mail order site and sells this plant (along with other succulents) I've always gotten really healthy plants from them including this one!