"Uncle Derek Says"

xAnagelia 'Madam Lash' and its siblings 'Toy Boy' and 'Sweet Seduction'

"It must have been mid 1980's when John Catlan was trying to produce small variegated pineapple plants, because the variegated Ananas comosus was just too large to be really popular. So he fiddled around crossing Ananas nanus with a variegated Ananas comosus. Eventually he gave up trying, but had some very stale pollen left over, which he did not consider to be viable, but he decided to use it on Neoregelia 'Mother' The resultant seedlings were left in some corner to fend for themselves. Unbeknownst to John there were some variegated ones there and when the market for variegated Neoregelias really opened up John started to look round. From this particular seed batch (could easily have been more than one seed pod!) three variegated plants were selected. One of these plants does not flower as such, but produces a bunch of smaller twisted leaves where the inflorescence should be. It produces offsets which look normal until "flowering" time comes and you are rewarded with a bunch of leaves! This plant has been called 'Madam Lash' The other two selected plants flower normally - well - something like you expect in an xNeomea flower but as far as we can trace Aechmea pollen was not involved intentionally at any stage. These have been called 'Toy Boy' and a smaller plant with narrow leaves 'Sweet Seduction' xAnagelia 'Toy Boy' xAnagelia 'Toy Boy' flower All three names given by John have that exotic (or is it erotic?) flavour to show that something abnormal did occur! We intend calling all three cultivars xAnagelia "

Photo Credits:
xAnagelia 'Madam Lash' - John Catlan
xAnagelia 'Toy Boy' and flower - Geoff Lawn