Random plant event: Vriesea NOID true flower

I probably should have cropped more out of this photo, but you can see the interesting part pretty clearly by opening the picture in a new window. It's not going to win any beauty contests, I suppose, but I've seen worse.


These smaller, plain-leaved Vrieseas offset after flowering like Guzmania lingulata and Aechmea fasciata do. I bought one that was similar to this, long after it had flowered, because it had five good-sized offsets on it already, and it was only in a four-inch pot. Both the original plant and all five (now-separated) offsets are doing fine. I don't know whether removing the offsets on these will encourage more to be produced, but that's kind of what I'm hoping. It seems to work that way for the Guzmania and Aechmea. The parent plant is at least not dead, or showing any signs of wanting to be dead (listening to Portishead, giving longing looks to stray razor blades), so I figure that's a good sign.

The bad part is that I bought the plant long after the flower was gone, so I have no idea what color it's going to be when they finally bloom. I think I'm hoping for yellow like the one in the picture. The best bet for another color would be red. It's a pretty red, to be sure: kind of a deep but not dark red. But the yellow has the added interest of a second color, so it's more interesting to me at the moment. Whichever color it is, I won't find out for years, and by that point I may have changed my mind anyway, so it's probably not worth thinking too hard about.