Halfway through this afternoon, I realised that was not going to be able to take the shots I had been planning to post tonight.
So a quick visit to the garden (ours that is) and one of the bromeliads comes to the rescue in the form of Alcantarea "Silver Plum". The Alcantareas are the largest of the bromeliads and are the only ones that like full sun conditions. Being winter, this plant has lost some of its colour but come summer, the plum colour on the leaves will darken and take on a silver powdery sheen when viewed from some angles. The Silver Plum is a cultivar of Imperalis and is quite a prized plant.
@hermann The flowers for Alcantareas come out on tall spikes - for the Silver Plum it could be more than 2 metres tall. But the flowers themselves are weird spidery things. I probably wont get any flowers this year from them to post. I might get a chance to slip in an old pic from last year to show you.
@bella_ss if you have Silver Plums, treat them well. They don't produce pups and only grow from seed and the main supplier of seedlings has had a very bad couple of years and it is very hard to find young ones at present.
A beautiful shot to show the beauty of this plant.
Soon you can collect some of you investments. After blooming they make several youngsters on the stem . ( Most of this plant do)
This looks to be impressive in size. It definitely wouldn't be happy in the little pots my broms are in. :) Apparently the parrots don't bother these plants — I don't see any beak marks on any of the leaves.
Soon you can collect some of you investments. After blooming they make several youngsters on the stem . ( Most of this plant do)