"Uncle Derek Says"

Tillandsia usneoides - Hoaxes and non-hoaxes
January 2006

"In 1998 I was given a test by Tom Lineham (past Editor of the BSI Journal) who sent me a photograph entitled Tillandsia usneoides but the photo had been taken somewhere in Alaska. If you did not know the locality you would assume it was correct like I nearly did. It is in fact a Usnea.
In 2002 I was sent a photo of Racinaea insularis by Sandra Pozo on the Galapagos Islands. But what were the hanging festoons in the photo? Was this a first sighting of T. usneoides on these islands. False alarm because they were lichen of some sort!
In 2006 on my asking on the internet on Brom-L about a blue flowered T. usneoides as mentioned in Smith & Downs, Eric Gouda of the Utrecht University, Belgium obliged by doctoring a photo so we had a blue petalled flower. He even sent a red flowered one for good measure. By this time even the most naïve were having doubts of these claims!
We must remember that the petals of this Tillandsia are not always green. In 2000 when Wolfgang Tittelbach - Editor of Die Bromelie - said there was a yellow flowering form, I took it with a pinch of salt! Anyway, I acquired a small piece and a couple of years later it flowered yellow which had me in raptures and bragging to Walter Till. Walter deflated me somewhat, by saying it was found somewhere in N Peru and was not that rare. I decided it should be recorded somewhere and this is how the cultivar name 'Spanish Gold' came into existence. The interesting thing is that it sets seed readily but the seed is not viable. Perhaps it needs another clone.
This seed setting had me wondering because although I was always seeing green flowers on my various bunches of T. usneoides hanging around the garden I had never seen any seed. This puzzled me because of my experience with the sub-genus Diaphoranthema of which T. usneoides is a member. I have rather an extensive collection of this group and find that if a plant looks like it is going to flower you always seem to find a seed pod later on. On some occasions the flower does not even need to open! Why is it so?
In 2006 Greg Dauss of California sent me a photo of roots on a T. usneoides seedling. I knew this was not a hoax because I knew that you could not get roots on a 'cutting', seedlings were still 'smart' enough to anchor themselves wherever they germinated by the use of roots. I just had to ask Greg how many times was he getting seed to set on his T. usneoides. In his experience he had only seen the thick leaved form perform.
Perhaps others may like to comment on their experience. Any more hoaxes or non-hoaxes?"