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"In October 1999 Grace Goode sent me some photos of hybrids she had done using Neoregelia 'Small World' and a Neoregelia concentrica v. minor. None of the hybrids showed any Neoregelia concentrica traits which had me worried because this was contrary to what I had become accustomed to. Grace said she had got the plant from Pat Coutts in Townsville. This had me contacting Rob Smythe by Email. The Townsville group had already decided it was not a Neoregelia concentrica of any form because the teeth on the leaves were not black, it had no concentric lines, and did not flower with purplish centre leaves, and had called the plant Neoregelia 'Bob'. The plant had come from Bob Okasaki of Hawaii and apparently he had got the plant in the rare plant auction at the Los Angeles Conference in 1984. Its name then was Neoregelia concentrica v. minor f. variegata! What I cannot understand is that the anomaly regarding the name was not noticed when it was auctioned at such a learned gathering.
The variegation is very unstable and frequently disappears from offsets.
So if you come across the name Neoregelia concentrica v. minor with or without variegation and the plant looks like a small N. carolinae or 'Meyendorffii' then 'Bob' is the answer.
Geoff Lawn from Perth, who is one of my roving investigators, had sent me a photo of a Neoregelia concentrica "Bob's" in February 1999 taken by Anne Bartell of Cairns asking me my comments as to what this plant was. My reply was rather blunt "I go rather lukewarm with things like 'Bobs'. I only try to tackle ones that do stand out from the rest and are worth investigating and worth solving" Geoff tells me that Olive Trevor from Brisbane also knew about the plant with the comment that she had named it 'Bobs' because it came from Bob Okasaki (but retained the 'concentrica'!)
It appears that this plant's problems were known widely but no-one bothered to write about it.
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