The 'European origin' had me confused until I found out that David Barry who imported several plants from Europe in the 1960's lived at a place called Brentwood in California. Bill Paylen of California, one of the first members of the BSI, remembers a branched spiked plant with reddish bracts coming from California Jungle Garden Nursery in Brentwood and this could well be our plant. In the early 1980's John Arden took a slide of what he considered to be Vriesea 'Brentwood' and I am using this as an example of this cultivar. Cole describes this cultivar as having 'maroon' bracts and this colour is described as a dark brownish red in my Encyclopaedia but is not a colour used in Stearn's 'Botanical Latin'. The colour from John Arden's slide is closer to #20 brick red on Isley's colour chart. The leaves are very dark. It is amply branched with up to 7 side spikes.
Now for the crunch. There is also a plant being grown in Australia since about the mid 1980's which is thought to have come via Kent's nursery to June Bennett of Cairns, Queensland. This has yellow floral bracts and darkish green leaves. The inflorescence is only few branched and sometimes reduced to a single spike. If we refer to Brian Smith's Manuscript of Bromeliad Hybrids 1984 we will see that 'Brentwood' x fenestralis (Kent) and 'Brentwood' F2 were on offer in nurserymen's catalogues. Neither have since been registered so we do not know what they look like either! This could well be the reason why we have this yellow bracted form in circulation also being called 'Brentwood'.
A similar yellow bracted plant is also on offer at Tropiflora, Florida, under the same name. I intend to call this Vriesea 'Brentwood Lemon' not only because of the colour but because of my sense of humour!"
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