Bromeliad or not? ID please........

[kevyn chan]

found this at a fruit stall's little garden corner......first glance i thought its a dracaena sp. and then when i stumbled on the second clump, i realised its a brom.........asked the store helper, she replied, 'it's a pineapple flower la'...hehe

[atmccmn]

Kevyn,

It looks very similiar to Aec. Fascini. A hybrid of chantinii X fasciata.
See the pic. below. The form of the leaves of your plant are very similiar to the pic shown below. Does the underside of the leaves have whitish powdery stuff?

photo credit to http://www.fcbs.org

Ps. your plant in the pic. is heavily infested with trips. You have to properly clean it up.

[kevyn chan]

yeah whitish brownish powdery stuff but i remembered it is on the upperside not underside....i cleaned them off already with water and rub dub dub but does it been done enough? or is there any preventive maintenance i should do before letting it out to play......it is still in the quarantine area (my toilet) so if its an aechmea, i need to pot it in rich soil media right?

[atmccmn]

Kevyn,

If you are refering to the white dots in the first pic. as powdery stuff, they are actually trips. You can soak the plant for abt 30 min and gently rub off 'those stuff' off from every leaves. Sorry to say this, you have to throw it away if the plant is heavily infested. That's what I did to mine.

Otherwise, you can use systemic insecticide. Soak the whole plant into the solution. Diluted Malathion solution couldn't kill them. I have friends who use artist paint brush dipped in concentrated malathion and paint at the affected area. Just sharing this info but not highly reccomended. You might KO first before the pest!

Use coarse well draining mix for it's media. MY formula is 50% of crushed charchoal to 30% perlite to 20% of burnt red soil and compost. Most Aec. are highly epiphytic. They grow very slow that way but surely bring out their best colors.

Let me know how well they play then
AT.