Bromeliad
Guzmania lingulata
Drinks from the cup at its center rather than from the soil, which is why an ordinary watering routine drowns it.
- Type
- Houseplant · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Red
- Sunlight
- Bright indirect light, kept out of the midday sun.
- Watering
- Keep the central cup filled; the compost only needs to stay barely damp.
- Feeding
- Once a month, a heavily diluted orchid feed poured into the cup and nowhere else.
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- Pull dead and browning leaves away at the base.
- Mar–May Spring Growth
- May–Dec Flowering
- Jan–Mar Flowering
- Plant spacing
- 15.7 in
- In-row spacing
- 15.7 in
- Between rows
- 19.7 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Aerial roots: it does not root in soil at all
- Spread
- 16–24 in across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant
In the wild these roots grip bark and take water and air straight from the atmosphere, and they suffocate in potting compost. Bark, moss, or a mount with nothing around it is the right footing; a pot of soil is what kills them.
The roots are anchors and very little else. Water goes into the cup at the centre of the rosette, the compost is kept barely damp, and the plant flowers once, makes pups around its base, and dies.
The habit is Bromeliad’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Confirmed safe
We say a plant is safe only where a named poison-control reference names that exact species and records it as non-toxic to both cats and dogs. Most plants are on nobody’s list, and their absence here is not a judgement about them. This is a record of what those references say, not veterinary advice, and it cannot account for your own animal, the quantity eaten, or a plant treated with anything.
The ASPCA row names a variety of our species. Its Mosaic Vase entry is Guzmania musaica, a different one in the same genus.
- Mealybugs Mealybugs tucked in at the leaf bases
- Scale insects Scale insects settled on the leaves and stems
- Root & crown rot Root rot from overwatering the soil instead of filling the cup
- Brown leaf tips caused by fluoride in tap water
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly Syrphidae
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Mealybugs
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
Green-leaved houseplants, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com