Vriesea 'Exotica Jungle Tips'

Exotica Jungle Tips is a large beasty that has Vriesea bituminosa as a mother. Father unknown! While it doesn't grow as large as the mother, it will still reach a height and spread of 70cm+.

Like Mum, it has lovely black tips to the leaves. It differs in the colour of the leaves, which are a nice mossy green, with darker squiggles across them, making this a more interesting specimen than the species.

Vriesea 'Exotica Zulu'

A Vriesea incurvata hybrid, with a deep blood red, almost purple coloured spear. The flower spike looks especially dramatic over the bright green foliage. Best in full shade and quite happy in frost free gardens.

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.