Friday Fabulous Flower - Queen's tears once again

Sorry about the repeat of this FFF, but this is one of TPP's favorite house plants and it flowers when this blogger is hard up for material.  The Queen's tears is the common name of Billbergia nutans, a member of the pineapple/bromeliad family.  And the flowers are just so darned lovely. You just have to love the blue eye liner margins of the green petals emerging from pink sepals and bracts.  Even the yellow exerted anthers show up so nicely. It gives us something to look forward to in the winter.  

Friday Fabulous Flower - Queen's Tears

The Queen's tears (Billbergia nutans) is without question TPP's favorite winter flowering house plant.  It's been feature on FFF before, so it's just something to look forward to each year.  This year more than a dozen of the pink inflorescences emerged from within whorls of leaves, and tonight the Phactors are hosting and open house, so a few plant fanciers will get a treat.  The flowers are just so attractive with their blue eye-liner petals and pink sepals.  So hoping you enjoy this as much as TPP.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Queen's tears

The Queen's tears is a commonly and easily grown bromelliad.  TPP's sits happily in a hanging basket outside for the summer until things get frosty. Then it comes inside, and almost without fail it flowers in January.  The flowers don't last long but it is still such a winter time joy.  TPP has featured this plant before (Billbergia nutans) because it has such an odd combination of colors, pink bracts, flowering stalk, and calyx, green ovary and green petals edged in blue, and the yellow anthers.  Several such inflorescences  ring the basket and the whold thing is quite lovely, so do forgive the redundancy; it's just nice to see every year.

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.