Sheep-eating plant?

Sure. TPP calls BS on a sheep-eating plant.  Puya chiliensis, a member of the pineapple family, is a tough, spiny native of the Andes.  Sheep ain't, so right there the story falters.  How does a plant become adapted to snaring fluffy sheeps with its "razor-sharp" spines so it can receive nutrition from their rotting remains interact so intimately with a recently, in evolutionary terms, introduced species?  Oh, maybe it's really an alpaca predator!  Note also that the spiny part consists of the bracts of the inflorescence, so here's a plant that only flowers every now and then, that uses its reproductive parts to snare sheep (or alpaca?).  Actually when bromeliads flower the apical meristem of that shoot gets used to produce the inflorescence, and after flowering and fruiting, that stem dies, but branches below continue its growth.  It would work better if the plant figured out how to fertilize itself prior to reaching reproductive size/age.  If you haven't looked up some images, this plant is like a yucca with a spiny pineapple atop a flowering stalk.  So this story doesn't work on several levels showing that some people will believe anything.  Maybe once someone found a dead sheep with its fleece entangled in the emerging inflorescence, but sorry, TPP doesn't believe this story for even a second.  And there it is reported (secondarily) with nary a smidgen of disbelief (but it is the HuffPo, so...).  Good grief, what kind of science reporting is that?  It is a cool plant, and if mine flowered after 15 years, TPP wouldn't be sheepish about seeking some publicity, but made up stories wouldn't be part of it.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Big Blue Bromeliad

This particular house/garden plant has always been reluctant to flower. While most of the tropicals flower annually, and reliably, this particular bromeliad (Tillandsia cyanea) often goes a couple of years between flowering events, but then the display is long lasting and quite attractive. Like many tropical plants the long lasting display is produced by colorful bracts composing a large inflorescence. One or two short-lived flowers emerge daily. This is typical of pollination by hermit hummingbirds who travel a path from plant to plant across the rainforest and the inflorescence serves as a beacon for that particular stop on their daily travels. This species has large flowers for this genus. The plant itself is easy enough to grow in a hanging basket of orchid mix and soil. The grassy leaves are tempting to the felines, so growing it aloft keeps them apart.

Winter flowers - Indoor Tropical Plants

You can take the biologist out of the tropics, but you can't take the tropics out of the biologist. A number of tropical plants actually thrive living out of doors during our generally hot, humid midwestern summers until early fall, hung from shepard's hooks in semi-shade or convenient oak limbs. Once the temperatures begin falling below 50F, they get moved inside for the duration of fall and winter.

The interesting thing is that this move stimulates regular flowering from December to February, a great indoor display of botanical color. Here's one of the Phactor's long time favorites: Billbergia nutans, the Queen's tears, a bromeliad or a member of the pineapple family. The combination of pink bracts and calyx, green ovary and petals, outlined in blue, and the yellow stamens is very striking and a quite unique color combination.

This plant grows well in a 50:50 combination of orchid mix and cactus potting "soil". Every two weeks the entire hanging basket is showered throughly and allowed to drain before rehanging.

Another reliable and easy to grow tropical plants that reliably flowers under this indoor-outdoor regiem is one of the orchid cacti that another blogger has illustrated so nicely. Enjoy.