We first got the name as B. elegans, but then a few years later it was corrected to B. sanderiana. Needless to say 30 years later we still come across B. sanderiana with B. elegans on the label! As part of this confusion there is a Billbergia amoena v. penduliflora described by Mulford Foster in 1962, which Smith placed in synonymy under B. sanderiana ( See Smith & Downs page 1996)
I would suggest you ignore this reasoning because Fosters plant is clearly linked to the amoena
/ elegans complex.
In the 1980's a plant called B. amoena v. carnea arrived in Australia from Brazil and by the 1990's I had acquired an offset. In the 1990's another plant called Billbergia sp. was imported from Brazil and on flowering, photographs were sent to Elton Leme, who identified it as Billbergia amoena v. carnea. I again acquired an offset, so now I was the proud owner of two different Billbergia amoena v. carnea!
At the 1996 World Conference at Orlando Don Beadle spoke on guess what - Billbergias. Amongst his slides I noticed one of my B. amoena v. carnea BUT he called his plant B. elegans and it had orange scape bracts, just like mine!
What was going on? On returning to Australia I started corresponding with Harry Luther as to this apparent anomaly.. We had been searching for a B. elegans that looked something like B. sanderiana. Harry pointed out that B. amoena and B. elegans are very closely allied, and went so far as to suggest that he suspects that B. elegans is only an inland, drier area, ecotype, compared to B. amoena being a coastal rain forest ecotype. My plant with the orange scape bracts was B. elegans.
This was in the back of my mind when I prepared to photograph a Billbergia amoena in 1999 that Ruby Ryde of Sydney had collected in Brazil in 1986. It had orange bracts but the inflorescence axis was not orange. I contacted Ruby to find out why she had B. amoena on the label and where did she find it?
The name had been given because it looked like a B. amoena and had been collected when she stayed at the Caraca Monastery near Santa Barbara, Minas Gerais. I remembered that Tom Lineham had been there too and had written an article in the BSI Journal and I found it on page 206 - 1992 volume. Luckily Tom had given an inventory of plants collected on his trip and this included Billbergia elegans.
This meant I just had to refer the problem to Harry and, yes, he confirmed my thoughts of Ruby's plant being Billbergia elegans.
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