Aechmea lueddemanniana & the beautiful cultivars.

Author: Lynn Hudson, Cairns

The name has a lovely ‘roll’ on the tongue. Many nursery people give their plants names to attract buyers and bromeliad hybridists are no exception - now we have XAnagelias .‘Madam Lash’ and ‘Toy Boy’! Not so with lueddemanniana - it was named after H. Lueddemann, plant collector.
Victoria Padilla described lueddemanniana as “a spread of 3 feet, arching leaves are mottled with a darker shade of green but most of the plant will become bronzy rose if grown in sufficient light. The erect inflorescence, about 2 feet long, ends in a panicle of lavender petalled flowers that turns into a dense head of white berries ... then become a startling purple. In var. rubra, the foliage is rich bronzy red at all times.” (“Bromeliads” 1978, page 22.)
Aechmea lueddemanniana and the various cultivars are plants that are easily loved as they are attractive, hardy and freely produce pups. They need to be grown in good light to attain their lovely colours and I find they tend to pup profusely after flowering. The inflorescence is identical in the species and the cultivars.
Some growers find the cultivar names confusing as the same colours of pink, green, white, creamy white and pink/orange occur in many them but the colours are differently arranged. In ‘The Bromeliad Cultivar Registry” of June 1998 I found listed these eight cultivars:

• ‘Pinkie’ is a cultivar with pink tones, in Cairns it glows pink.
• ‘Alvarez’ is medio-picta, with a broad stripe of pinkish orange up the centre of each leaf, green margins and centre lineations.
• ‘Blanca Alvarez’ has variegated foliage but is not medio-picta.
• ‘MEND’ is albo-marginated, becomes bright pink/red in good light. The name is derived from four people’s names, some of whom you have heard or read about. M for Mildred Merkel, E for Edward Ensign who sowed the seed, N for Julian Nally who gave the seed to Ensign, and D in memory of Ralph Davis.
• ‘Aurora’ is a selfing of ‘MEND’, and is variably variegated.
• ‘Rodco’ is the opposite colouration to ‘Alvarez’ but has wider margins and some pink
  lineations.
• ‘Rodco Inverta’ has reversed variegation to ‘Rodco’, similar to ‘Alvarez’, but with
  greener greens and brighter pinks.
• ‘Ballerina’ is an F2 seedling of ‘Rodco Inverta’ and is an upright small vase shaped rosette of pink 2” x 10” leaves, distinctly brighter than lueddemanniana when grown in 50% light.
  Out with your labels and pens, give these beauties their right name.