What in the World is a... Bromeliad?

摘要

When I first heard the word, I thought it might be some sort of exotic vegetable — maybe halfbroccoli and half something else. I learned later it was a plant. This is not an informative article, but a description of my complete ignorance and what my plants have taught me. I know there have been articles about bromeliads in the Hobby Greenhouse magazine, but I passed over them lightly because I was most interested in orchids and the gesneriads, especially African violets. However, I did get the impression that the bromeliads only bloom once and then grow "pups" at the side of the plant. If you were lucky enough to grow pups, you could plant them to make new bromeliads. This sounded like a lot of work to me when I was most interested in the plants that bloom over and over to my great satisfaction.