In 1930 M.J.Van Acker, after having taken over the nursery of his father-in-law M.L.Poelman, had made numerous crossings and seed propagations of Vrieseas. In that year he displayed a group of these at the Centennial Exposition in Ghent. To one with a branched inflorescence he gave the name Vriesea ' Van Ackeri'. Here is our first clue. 'Van Ackeri' is compound, ruling out the plant that circulated in Australia in the early nineties with a simple dark red, almost purple, sword shaped spike from the Brisbane Bromeliad Centre.
The registered parentage of 'Van Ackeri' is 'Van Geertii' x jonghei. Here I'm willing to put my foot in my mouth and say this cannot be right.
'Van Geertii' came into existence from the crossing of V. incurvata, a simple red spike, and V. duvaliana, simple bright red with green tips and margins. Being a primary hybrid the resultant offspring would have a simple red spike, possibly with some green or yellow involvement. This would indicate that the description in the BSI Cultivar register is correct.
"A dwarf plant developing a stem that is quite short-terminated by an oblong narrow spike formed of bracts that are yellowish at the base and on the interior edges-red on the exterior side."
The short stem helps to verify the parents as both have scapes equal to or shorter than their leaves.
On to the next stage - 'Van Ackeri'. If the next ingredient in the formula was V. jonghei, another plant with a simple, many flowered, green, lax at anthesis spike and leaves with faint irregular transverse lines, there would not be any indication of the progeny being other than a simple, probably brownish, spike with marked leaves, certainly not compound. If compound could be spontaneous there would have been some hint of this appearing prior to the entry of V. saundersii and V. rodigasiana into the breeding arena. So here I rule out V. jonghei and look for another plant. Padilla gives a hint with her suggestion of V. 'Poelmanii'.
For a starting point we should look at some history of Van Acker. In 1887-1888 M.L. Poelman, his father in law, bought from Duvals in Paris a hybrid Vriesea which included naming rights. The plant had a simple spike and he promptly named it V. 'Poelmanii'. The parents of this are listed as V. 'Gloriosa' (simple spike) and 'Van Geertii' (simple spike)1. Over many years of selective growing on, selections of V. 'Poelmanii' with compact and branched inflorescence became available.2 With a 30 year or so gap between the arrival of V. 'Poelmanii' and the release of V. 'Van Ackeri' these selected cultivars could well have been available. Obviously there was no animosity between Van Acker and his father-in-law, (he took over the Business), it would follow that when he started his hybridizing and wanted branched spikes he would rely on "Dad's" plant 'Poelmanii.'
Why then the confusion in the registered formulae, I can think of two! I have recently gone into print expressing my concerns on the validity of names on widely propagated plants so much so that the V. jonghei listed could indeed have been a totally different plant. Hardly likely as in these early days the volume was not so dense as to make identification difficult. The other, and more likely, is that we here witness the start of the modern European, and to a lesser extent many other centres, jealousy. Hybridists closely guarding the formula of successful plants to maintain their own monopoly. In earlier times of the likes of Morren, Duval, Marechal etc. information was freely distributed amongst their peers, as these people were more academically minded and not totally commercialists.
For someone to do the "right thing" by releasing a breeding but still maintaining secrecy by changing one parents name, V. jonghei and not V. 'Poelmanii', is not surprising. Although Van Acker's notes do not indicate what plants he used in his hybrids he may not even have known. If his notes don't give any details where did the registered parentage come from? Was this a guess or did another person supply it? The register gives no indication of a third party. There is a clue in Flora Neotropica p1274 where parentage is shown as V. jonghei x V. 'Van Geertii' with references given as Bromel. Soc. Bull.11: 61,63. 1961 and 17:96. 1967. We know that no mention is made of V. jonghei in the first reference but may have been in the 1967 reference OR it could be an error on Smith's part!
The overall conclusion to be drawn from this is that the description of V. 'Van Ackeri' in "Bromeliads" 1973 by Victoria Padilla is correct with V. 'Van Geertii' to be added to the parentage. We then have V. 'Van Ackeri' Hort.= 'Van Geertii' x 'Poelmanii' This medium-sized plant has bright green leaves and a striking branched inflorescence with broad dense bracts of brilliant orange red.
May I make a point here, although this description is typical of what is usually available it leaves a lot to be desired to more closely identify cultivars.
(1) "On the origin of Vriesea Hybrids" by Charles Chevalier JBS 11. 1961 pp 61-63
(2) "Vriesea Hybrids of Today and Yesteryear" by Dr G. Samyn in Proceedings of the VIII th Bromeliad - Adelaide 1995
If anyone has access to Bromeliad Society Bulletin 1967 page 96 please advise because this would answer one of our problems.(See ADDENDUM below)
The one remaining problem is getting a photograph which resembles Padilla's description because clearly the dark-red/purple bracted plant in Australia which was imported from Kent's Nursery in California some 20 years ago is wrongly named but we will continue to use this name until we get a definite conclusion."
ADDENDUM to Vriesea 'Van Ackeri'
"Thanks to our Webmaster, Mike Andreas we now have a copy of page 96 of BS Bulletin 1967. This has certainly changed the direction of our investigations. In 1954 a photograph (shown to the right) was shown on the front of Bromeliad Society Bulletin #3 allegedly of Vriesea 'Flammea', a Duval hybrid from 1902 whose parents were quoted as 'Van Geertii' x jonghei . In the 1961 BS Bulletin #4 Charles Chevalier suggested the photograph was wrong and it really depicted Vriesea 'Van Ackeri' and it is from this stage that Vriesea 'Van Ackeri' was allotted the same parentage. After considerable discussion Charles Chevalier came to the conclusion that there was very little difference between Vriesea 'Van Ackeri' and Vriesea 'Viminalis Rex'. Vriesea 'Viminalis Rex' was the name given to all like-branched Vriesea hybrids in existence in Belgium in the early part of the 1900's. This would be the first recorded use of the modern term Cultivar Group for like plants irrespective of parentage.This duplication of parentage was shown in Flora Neotropica, Monograph 14 Tillandsioideae (1977), in Padilla's International Check list (1979)[The 'Flammea' here had an extra parent of barilletii] and in the Bromeliad Cultivar Registry 1998.
What is confusing is that in Padilla's book 'Bromeliads' (1976) she puts the probable parentage of Vriesea 'Van Ackeri' as 'Poelmannii x ? which is what I will be adopting in the BCR update. Whether Vriesea 'Flammea' is still being grown is another challenge for the future.
The linking of the Aussie clone to the name Vriesea 'Van Ackeri' makes another twist when it is recognised by John Arden of California as the same plant he used in his hybrids. This seems all the more feasible to continue using the name Vriesea 'Van Ackeri' for this dark-red /purple bracted plant!"