Walkaway: Tillandsia dyeriana

It's occurred to me that there have already been a couple weeks when I probably could have mailed plants out and didn't, even though I wasn't expecting suitable weather for that until end of April / beginning of May. So, I'm trying to get prices set and photos done so we can go ahead and begin with the selling and trading. (You'll know when I'm ready to start mailing stuff out by the cold snap that will hit Iowa.¹) I spent the better part of Sunday taking pictures; we'll see how long it takes to get them rotated / cropped / colored / etc.

Anyway. I needed 4-inch grower pots, perlite, and aquatic soil, so I went to Iowa City on Friday, where I saw the most interesting new bromeliad I've seen in quite a while:


Not that the foliage is so fascinating -- as you can (kinda) see, it's basically just a dull green, medium length, medium width kind of deal -- but the inflorescence is pretty striking.

(Particularly striking is how the pure white flowers turn nearly pure black when they die.)
It's apparently not a particularly difficult plant to grow, but I passed it up because it was priced at $20, and I have no positive past Tillandsia experiences,² so it didn't seem worth it. Not that $20 for a 4-inch pot could ever seem reasonable, but . . . well. You know what it's like; I don't have to explain it to you.

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¹ Not really: you'll know because I'll put up a post about it.
² I like T. cyanea in theory, and managed to keep one alive for five years, but it never grew very much, it didn't rebloom, it tried to offset a couple times but then the offsets died, and eventually it rotted out and died. My best guess is that it probably wanted more light than it was getting.