Botanical Identify: Guzmania lingulata
This attractive pink tropical is among the most typical home vegetation from the Bromeliad household. Different standard cultivars have brilliant yellow or orange bracts.
New sorts of Guzmania lingulata are launched on a regular basis. Select what you want — they’re all spectacular. ‘Orange Star’ has long-lasting orange bracts. ‘Luna’ is a well-liked selection with mauve bracts. ‘Rana’ is a more moderen hybrid with a barely bigger flower spike than the species, in orange-red.
Its leathery, shiny inexperienced leaves develop in a rosette that creates an urn which should be full of water in any respect instances. That is the one plant I do know of that ought to be watered in its middle and won’t rot.
After 3 or 4 years, ‘Scarlet Star’ produces a flower head made from brilliant pink bracts that rise within the plant’s middle and final about 5 months. Its small, white true flowers are virtually hidden by the bracts.
Bromeliads add dazzling shade and a tropical really feel to any room. Get one in your workplace, too, and make a daring assertion. It grows nicely beneath the fluorescent gentle of places of work. Preserve it out of direct daylight to stop the bract shade from fading.
Guzmania lingulata will not want repotted till it produces offsets. Actually, holding it in a small container helps promote blooming.
If you wish to cowl up a plain nursery pot, simply slip it in an ornamental container. It is a good concept to position some small rocks within the backside of the container to maintain the nursery pot above the drainage water. Bromeliads have small root programs and will not tolerate soggy soil.
Crops bloom as soon as after which die, a gradual course of that takes as much as 3 years. Propagating its offsets — or pups — that develop on the base of the plant gives you a group that blooms yr after yr.
Guzmania Lingulata ‘Scarlet Star’ Rising Ideas
Origin: Central and South America
Top: About 12 in (30 cm) excessive. Its leaves can attain as much as 18 in (45 cm) lengthy.
Mild: Put this tropical home plant in a brilliant location out of direct solar. Solar publicity could cause brown spots on leaves. It can thrive within the brilliant fluorescent gentle of an workplace.
Water: Water the middle of the rosette and maintain 1 in (2.5 cm) of water in its urn (middle of the rosette) always. Bromes are delicate to the chlorine and fluoride in faucet water. Use distilled water or rainwater and permit it to heat as much as room-temperature first. Houseplants hate chilly water! Water soil simply sufficient to maintain the roots barely moist. Empty outdated water from the urn each week and promptly substitute it with contemporary water.
Humidity: Prefers excessive humidity. Attempt to preserve at the least 50% relative humidity close to your Bromeliad; essentially the most environment friendly approach to do that is to set your plant on a humidity tray or use a cool-mist room humidifier.
Temperature: Common to heat (65-80°F/18-27°C). Preserve your plant out of chilly blasts from home windows and doorways throughout the winter. Additionally defend it from warmth/AC vents.
Soil: Bromeliad or orchid potting combine. Or combine equal elements fine-grade fir bark and all-purpose potting combine.
Fertilizer: Feed month-to-month spring by way of summer time with a balanced water-soluble fertilizer diluted by half within the plant’s urn, then empty it after 1 week and fill with water. Or mist the leaves with a weak foliar fertilizer as soon as a month.
Propagation: Reduce off the offsets (pups) after they attain 3 in (7.5 cm) tall and plant them in contemporary, barely moist potting combine. Preserve excessive humidity for the pups for the primary month.
