Margaret Butcher
Have you ever been bothered by a problem that keeps coming back and just nags and nags? Well, here is one which has been partly laid to rest or fully laid to rest if you change your labels.
It all started in the 1970's when us South Aussies got a plant from Victoria called Billbergia kuhlmannii and in those days we believed everything the Victorians said. It was a pretty plant with few leaves, broad white banded and forming a tight tube. It had blue flowers which mostly coiled up like a watchspring. It easily set seed and the seed pod was always 3 sided (trigonous) with many irregular longitudinal grooves (sulcate).
A similar looking plant arrived from Queensland under the name of Billbergia venezuelana and another from N.S.W. as Billbergia brasiliensis. We were swamped with names! In 1980 in the U.S. Society seed bank, there appeared Billbergia exotica. Was this a hybrid with such a fancy name? It was listed in the 1979 International Checklist of Bromeliad Hybrids with no mention of parentage. In the latest "Beadle" listing, we have B. 'Exotica' as a name given by Kent to a possible Billbergia vittata cultivar. (this is confirmed in the Bromeliad Cultivar Registry 1998 but the description is so vague it could well be describing Billbergia brasiliensis.). All the plants that grew up under our tender care seemed to be exactly the same as our blue flowered Billbergia kuhlmannii. In March, 1984 the U.S. Society seed bank offered Billbergia alfonsi-joannis which four years later under our tender care produced a blue flowered - yes, you've guessed it!
By this time we were becoming desperate and we just had to confide in Bill Morris.(A BSI trustee) The only plant that tallied according to our interpretation was yet another name - Billbergia velascana. This was the only one with blue flowers and a grooved trigonous seed pod. Bill did calm us down (or did it just to shut us up) by asking us if the ovaries on page 2033 of Flora Neotropica were from flowers just opened, post floral, or full of seed. How were we to know? Secondly what were the chances of South Australia having a rare Billbergia velascana from Bolivia against the more common Billbergia brasiliensis which comes from the same area (near Rio de Janeiro) that many of the first Bromeliad imports to Australia came from. This didn't seem very scientific to us especially when Smith's writings had suggested the likelihood that Billbergia brasiliensis was a hybrid. If he meant an F1 hybrid then seedlings from this should bear the same relationship to either of the original parents (viz. the grandparents). However, our experience showed that self pollination produced regularity in progeny. So we forgot about the problem!
At a South Australian Society meeting in November, a member came up with plant in hand and wanted to know its name. Yes, it was our blue flowered Billbergia and I quietly went to a corner to bang my head there.
'WRITE TO LUTHER' kept drumming in my head. So we sent a slide, but even from that meagre picking Harry was fairly sure we had Billbergia brasiliensis. We now know that the ovary becomes sulcate as it matures, and that the lower ovaries can be trigonous before and at flowering. Neither of these facts are on page 2007 of Flora Neotropica.
By the way, Billbergia velascana has gone by the wayside because it has pale yellow-blue petals in their 'live' state and Billbergia kuhlmannii has a tubular ovary and is so rare that it is not even in the Marie Selby collection.
So if you have a Billbergia with few, white-banded stiff leaves, a blue flower which invariably winds up like a watchspring, and a three sided sulcate ovary which becomes almost globular when ripe, then you have Billbergia brasiliensis.