Advice on caring for your colorful bromeliads
I recently struck up a conversation with a stranger (as gardeners often do) — a fellow plant-aholic — while visiting a local nursery. She saw me eyeing a colorful bromeliad and offered that she’s tried several times to grow them. But inevitably, after a year or so, they start to die. Nothing she has tried could turn that around. So, I quickly whipped out my Master Gardener super-cape and started extending information. Since you may have had the same experience (with bromeliads, not super-capes), let me try to help.
First, the botany.
There are more than 3,000 species in the family of bromeliads. Some are terrestrial, using their roots and leaves to draw water and nutrients from the soil. These bromeliads grow everywhere, from bright, sandy beaches to leaf-littered shady forests and even on rocks, where their roots penetrate cracks to find moisture. Others are epiphytic: non-parasitic plants that anchor themselves to other plants and get their water and nutrients from the air, moisture and plant debris around them. They grow on tree trunks, shrubs or even cactus. These “air plants,” as they’re often called, have become a trendy, care-free addition to many homes.
What we most often find (and, in my case, buy) are terrestrial. Though there are exceptions, most of these are made up of a rosette formed by overlapping leaves atop a short stem and an unimpressive root system. They can be huge (more than 5 to 15 feet tall, including the flower) to really small (less than 2 inches tall), with leaf shapes as varied as their colors.
Before you declare that you simply can’t keep a bromeliad alive, it’s important to understand that bromeliads have a defined life cycle.
All bromeliads must reach maturity before they develop a flower, a process that takes a year or more depending on the species. Again, depending on the species, the resulting showy blossom will last for several months before beginning to fade and becoming an eyesore. No matter what you do, that spent inflorescence (the complete flower head including stems, stalks, bracts, and flowers) will not come back to life. It’s at this point that you’ll be tempted to ditch the whole plant. Instead, use a sharp, sterilized blade to cut the flower stalk as close to the foliage as possible, and continue to enjoy the leaves.
This is, in a manner of speaking, the beginning of the end for your plant. It’s in a natural and inevitable death spiral. It can take as much as two years before the mother plant finally turns completely brown and dies. But, while the plant is in flower, it also begins to form offsets, or pups – exact clones of the parent plant – around its base.
Once your bromeliad blooms,
it will only live for a couple more years. But it will continue to produce pups, which can be removed and propagated. They take around a year to develop into fullsize bromeliads. Thus, your original plant will provide many more generations of progeny that will bloom year after year.
Needless to say, with so many species of bromeliads out there, there is no one hard and fast routine for caring for them. But since you most likely purchased one of the common varieties that are readily available, some simple steps apply to most.
Grow bromeliads in containers with adequate drain holes in soil that drains well. To maintain moist but not soggy roots, water every week or two, allowing the soil to completely dry out between waterings. The simplest technique is to put the plant in the sink or shower and allow lukewarm water to fill the cup, run over the leaves and into the soil. Then drain the cup. Use a loose soil mix to encourage free draining, for example one part peat, one part bark, and one part coarse sand, as the University of Florida recommends. The plants are susceptible to root or crown rot if overwatered.
Place containers in an area with partial shade to partial sun. In fact, bromeliads thrive on a porch, near a window, or
anywhere where they receive bright, diffused light, but no direct sun. To decide if your bromeliad is happy with its light, check the color of the leaves. Too much light and the leaves turn a yellowish or pale green. Too little light and the leaves become dark green, soft and drooping.
Grown as houseplants, bromeliads rarely need fertilization. Outdoors, they will respond to a light application of fertilizer when they are actively growing. Use a general-purpose, soluble fertilizer applied to the soil every 1 to 2 months at 1⁄3 to 1⁄2 strength. Be careful not to get fertilizer in the center cup for fear of the salts burning the new leaves.
As far as growing bromeliads outdoors, there are some varieties of these tropical plants that are cold hardy.
The most cold-hardy bromeliads are those in the genus Puya. The spiky plants of the genus Puya are able to survive temperatures as low as 20 degrees. Plants of the genus Dyckia have thicker leaves and are sometime more cold tolerant. How do you know the genus of your plant? Read the label. Under the plant’s common name, often in small italics is the name of the genus — the word with a capital letter—followed by a specific epithet (descriptor) and then the variety.
If you can’t be sure, cover them with a layer of frost cloth or a blanket to help protect them. Better yet, bring them indoors.
These are really interesting plants to grow. I’ve seen several striking displays of several species grown together. If you’d like to try your hand at bromeliads, look to the publications of the The Bromeliad Society International (bsi.org/new/) for more information.
P.S. Bromeliad flowers also make attractive, exotic cut flowers that last for weeks.