Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Kew Wednesdays, the Princess of Wales Conservatory, Part 2

This is the second of two posts on my visit to the Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens in England (here's part one). Today it's Bromeliad madness...

This section was seriously crazy, so amazingly dense with cool plants!

The plant in bloom below is Vriesea amethystina, one of the very few I managed to capture the name of.

Am I the only one who sees a robot face with Bromeliad hair?

Silver/grey Tillandsia xerographica on the right.

I think this may have been my favorite plant. Not only because of the pattern but also because that shade of green glows against the dark almost black stripes.

This one was huge, much larger than it looks in the photo.

Wasn't that amazing? But here we are at the end...

And back outside, off to visit the Rock Garden and Alpine House next Wednesday. After that our visit to Kew sadly will have come to an end...

22 comments:

  1. Totally Kewel (like you weren't thinking that.) Love your bromeliad madness! Another great Wednesday post.

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  2. Some crazy plants in this post... I love 167, and also the striped plant in 170.

    Bromeliads are sort of meh when I see them individually, but massed like this, wow!

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    1. I think Bromeliads can suffer from "mall syndrome"...as in those plastic looking sickly things in a shopping mall. But they can be so much more!

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  3. The broms section always has a lot of colour. In spring they combine it with an orchid display with hundreds of flowering plants all packed into that small section.

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    1. Uhm...I know this might sound silly but I think I'm glad I saw it without the orchids. I think that might be too much!

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  4. Great foliage even without the blooms! Amazingly large number and variety of plants they fit in the building.

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    1. So true...if we hadn't been trying to see it all in a single day there is enough just in the PWC to keep you occupied for hours.

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  5. Suffering some serious greenhouse envy here. That plant in the middle of the second-to-last shot looks like something Gaugin dreamed up. I was hoping we would get another look at the building...thanks for that. And yes, I see it too: Wall-e gone native. I see people referring to photos by number. How do they come up with that?

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    1. Glad you see the robot too!

      If you place your cursor over the photo then whatever I named the photo (in this case numbers) should appear in the lower left hand corner of your browser window, a link basically. I have found that sometimes people name photos rather odd things. Some not fit for all ages viewing...

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    2. Hmmm...thought that might be it, but it's not happening for me

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    3. What type of computer are you on? I tried it with the iPad and it still worked. Don't have a proper Mac to experiment on though...

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  6. I loved hanging out in this greenhouse when I was an intern at Kew.

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    1. Did you ever take home any of the discarded plants?

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  7. I looooove it!! And it's entirely more exciting considering I had just gone bromeliad and tillandsia shopping today :)

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  8. Bromeliad heaven that place isn't it? A group of plants that exudes pure exotica :)

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  9. Awesome.

    So are you seriously tempted to grow some of these? I think you have some tillandsias already, but the one in 171, a species of bromelia maybe, I think that has you written all over it! Bromelia balansae (similar) is hardy to zone 8b, I hear . . .

    btw my favourite is 156, whatever that is. It's mind-bending.

    I can't quite read the label for 159, can you clarify please?

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    1. The label for 159 reads Hohenbergia catingae and yes! I would love to grow more Bromeliads. I do have a few, the only one that stays outside (undercover in the shade pavilion greenhouse) is my Fascicularia pitcairnifolia which to my eye is very similar to Bromelia balansae. And I totally agree about 156!

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    2. Thank you. It seems strange with bromeliads, certain ones are available in most supermarkets, unlabelled, yet try to find others and even specialist exotic nurseries over here come up short, except for maybe one or two of the more xerophytic ones. Yet Will Giles has a beautiful collection of these plants. I must do some more digging to find suppliers.

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  10. On-line sources for a huge variety of bromeliads are out there, on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Japan, Thailand, the Philipines, Brazil, I could go on and on. We're lucky here in California to be able to grow so many outdoors here. The web site www.bsi.org has a good listing of nurseries and local societies for bromeliads, and the link to the Florida Council of Bromeliad Societies has an excellent photo library of bromeliad species and hybrids. Dive in and explore the topic, but beware you might become addicted like me, with over 250 different types mostly all in the garden year round. There are also Facebook Planets for bromeliads, Vreiseas, Tillandsias in particular, with constant bromeliad photo porn

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