Much has been said and written about this gorgeous plant for over a hundred years. Little, if anything, has been documented about growing its seed.

I had originally obtained a specimen from a collector in Queensland in the late 1970s (as Canistrum leopardinum) but lost the maturing clump to a renegade bulldozer when a new area for a new greenhouse was being cleared. Finally, after many years of searching, about ten years ago a replacement 'leopardinum' was found from my good friends, Garry and Angela Flemming, who live a few hours to the south. It was potted and well fertilised and responded by blooming in 2005/6. Derek Butcher had written a detailed historical and taxonomic article on this plant in 2003 (easily accessed on the Bromeliad Cultivar Register at http://registry.bsi. org), including information from the examination of flowering plants in California and New Zealand, with the eventual conclusion that the plant conforms enough with Wittrockia gigantea to be listed as Wittrockia 'Leopardinum', a cultivar of W. gigantea. Nothing was mentioned about the fact that it self-sets seed, however. This fact must...