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Blooming Bromeliad
Visitors to Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Warm Temperate Pavilion in June 2007 got an exotic treat: the rare and unforgettable inflorescence of one of BBG's Puya berteroniana plants. In bloom, this member of the Bromeliad family sends up a stout flower stalk with many lateral branches, each densely packed with waxy flowers of an extraordinary deep metallic blue-green color that contrasts strikingly with the bright orange anthers. The bloom generally lasts from two to three weeks. This particular plant had not bloomed for the last eight years, said Warm Temperate Pavilion curator Karla Chandler.
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Native to the dry, mountainous Andean regions, P. berteroniana forms large rosettes of stiff, curling, shiny grey-green spiny-edged leaves. Although they are not succulents, their drought tolerance and spiky form combine to make them appealing to succulent growers, and they are often used in desert plantings. Other examples of this plant, grown from wild-collected seeds, can be found growing in the New World section of BBG's Desert Pavilion.