Vriesea 'Exotica Whirlpool'

Since I first saw a "washed out" Vriesea hieroglyphica in 2001, in Peter Brady's garden in Auckland (see the cover photo of "Bromeliads For The Contemporary Garden" I've wanted to develop one of these. In 2003, we grew several thousand Vri. hieroglyphica from seed, and several came up with varying degrees of "washout".

As far as I know, these don't come true from the next generation of seed, although I've never given it a good crack. They do come true from pup though and this is one of those plants. They'll probably remain fairly rare as pupping is pretty slow.