bromeliads make great house plants

Bromeliads make great houseplants. We’ve had this one forever. The plant forms multiple crowns after blooming. In fact, the one pictured is a grandchild offset from our original plant! It turns a marvelous pinkish-purple hue during its blooming cycle hence the name amount of light. I suspect they will be pinker in brighter light, as ours is.

The color on these can last for months. Then, offset emerge from the base of the mother plant which eventually dies. If you have enough room you can grow a large specimen with several crowns on one plant which also makes a dramatic statement. The plant gets up to 18″ across when mature but can easily be contained in a 4″ pot. We generally place our plant in a more decorative cache pot to prevent it from tipping over.

Folks always wonder where the flowers are. Well, they are right there in the center of the vase! See our photo to the right. They are so tiny, its not surprising that they need the the leaves to draw attention. The flowers may not matter much to us, but high in the treetops of tropical jungles where these bromeliads grow, they need to stand out to attract pollinators. That’s where the large leaves come in, luckily for us.

Source: Online from Tropiflora