Welcome to @Jeanca! We'd love to see photos of your plants!
Elaine, your plants are beautiful! Rain sure makes things grow a lot better and bloom much quicker.

Yes, Karen I actually think it's more than just the rain - these plants seem to be stimulated by changes in the weather. So a deep low pressure like a tropical storm going by will bump them into bloom. The next big low, unless we get another hurricane, will be the first cool front in September, I'd imagine. Another round of bloom then, I figure.

You seem to have the perfect situations for your plants! I keep wishing we'd moved to Florida when we left the Marshall Islands. A lot of our island friends moved to Florida, but we chose New Mexico, mainly for the good dark skies for my astronomer husband.

Part of my garden

Well, the second pic is - first a mistake🙄

Fred said:Yeah, I know. Nobody cared about the names of some of these broms. Well, I'm going to list them here anyhow. So there. :-)

Neo. johannis 'De Rolf'


Neo. 'Big Bopper'

I have both of those - two of my favourites!

@Jeanca Very nice collection you have there.

Nice collection and very nicely displayed. Looks like you don't have any weeds??? I'll be happy to send you some of mine.

Zero weeds! Lousy coastal soil but neos are all in pots in the ground with bark and dry leaves as a ground cover 😋

A recent acquisition: Neoregelia Fosters Pink Tips

Cool way to grow them in their pots. My weeds do not care how lousy my soil is. Actually I had heavy coastal soil in my last home, it was just old marsh muck so I am loving this Florida sand.

Yep, sand with leaf mold stuff mixed in seems to keep mine happy here. Mind you there's LOTS of leafy stuff mixed into the sand. Huge old oak trees that drop a thick carpet of leaves every spring. Going out to see if I can find any of my Neo's for Jeanca's interest.

Sorry, I don't know the names of most of these, they were all gifts, or were here when we moved into the house. First two pictures, I rescued this from a tight crutch of an oak tree out front. It was quite red and stripey when it was out there, but developed into the stripey mode as it settled back and opened out into a more normal Neo form. It seems to be striped when younger, and develop plain leaves when it's getting ready to bloom.





This one is a 'nail polish' with red tips when it's blooming but it's getting rather faded now.



My favorite of the Neo's, this purple one has made a nice wide clump, from one tiny start from a friend.






No walking by these gawdy flowers today. Billbergia pyramidalis 'Kyoto' almost full bloom. I'm kind of sad because my kids are all coming to visit next Monday and they'll be gone by then.



And one of my Billbergia 'Hallelujah' squeezing out a bloom between a rather squished bunch of leaves.

Your very first pic looks a bit like my Neo Paula - there are so many - but I have to confess to being anal about correct ID - huge relief this week when I finally got confirmed ID on a Noid as Neo Galaxy! And I check every single one against the Registry. Think I have maybe 200 currently. Am I addicted? Who, me? Yeah!

I'm with you, I like to know the names, too. But sometimes it's just impossible to pin them down.

I have a wonderful Bromeliad specialist nursery close by here, where I've bought a lot of mine, and I do try to keep the tags. Tropiflora is the largest bromeliad dealer in the US by far, and it's just a thrill to go there and see all the fabulous broms. But . . as you say, it points up how very many there are, too. Check out their site www.tropiflora.com

Here's a picture of one side of one of their huge shade houses. Massive and mind-boggling. They have spring and fall festivals with music and booths with other vendors at their property, but the broms are the big attraction for me. Bare-root offsets for $3 sometimes.

I had most named broms but over time the labels disappeared. Photos are not the best help unless you take a series over the year so all the different colorations are recorded. I also have some NOIDs that I picked up for pennies at Tropiflora's sales.

Have fun with your family Elaine. Mine are here right now, we had them for two weeks in June and another 2 weeks now. Kids are older and mostly off with their old friends.

Thanks, Alice, we're truly wondering what we're going to do with the grandkids. They are 8, 7, 6 and 5 now. They've rented an air b&b out on Siesta Key but there is red tide out there so the beach is not so nice, unfortunately. Unless the wind blows them offshore, the smell of the dead fish is just overwhelming. We've had an offshore breeze for a few days and it has improved, but the wind is changing around to westerly on Friday, just in time to make it really bad by Monday when the family arrive. Doing things away from the beach is going to be tough in this hot weather.

One or two little florets open, the rest will be gorgeous tomorrow.

Elaine, I had not seen any signs of flowering with any of my 'Kyoto's'.
Noticed Sunday a hint of a bract color down in the cup.
Has come a long quickly now.
Today's look...

I would love to mount broms in my trees but we get close to gale force winds quite often so it's a non-starter - but I can mount on old stumps! This is a clump of Hojo Rojo which I glued on - they have now rooted onto the wood and have made quite a few pups. As you can see from the colour, they're in full sun.

Elaine, I can only drool over Tropiflora's website 😢

We have a few growers so I can buy online - but not huge commercial ones!

On the other hand, the current president of the international bromeliad society lives about two hours away and has a small nursery packed to the gills - and her personal collection is a sight to behold!

Jean, I would love to have a brom nursery like that just two hours away. I believe growing bromeliads commercially on a large scale is a fairly recent trend in the USA. I remember buying from the owner of Tropiflora about 20 years ago and he had a small operation in those days. Now he travels the world collecting and hybridizing.