August 2016 - Tillandsia ‘Sparkler’Ok so this is a really REALLY horrible picture o
August 2016 - Tillandsia ‘Sparkler’Ok so this is a really REALLY horrible picture of a great plant. When I do get hours at work, I mainly work under T, who runs the annual section. No one at work is really great with annuals, except for Steve the actual Cornell-trained orchid expert, but he’s rarely around. T and I both come from a perennial / edible plant background, and she has a heavy art background (MFA out of Chicago - her focus was conceptual art I think??). What this means is that T is brililant at creating displays and setting up plants, but we’re all still staring at plants when they don’t come with labels and scratching our heads. It’s a learning process.She left the Tillandsias up to me. They had arrived neatly boxed and labeled, but there was an accident and the box flipped over and everything became jumbled up. Tillandsias are notoriously difficult to identify, and this was my first day actually handling air plants. Fortunately this is the sort of thing I enjoy so I raided google image search until I could make things match up with the shipping slip.Although previously I was ‘whatever’ about Tillandsias, in this process of rabidly researching them of course I started to like them more and more. T asked me if I had a favorite yet, and this ‘Sparkler’ hybrid was my favorite. Or maybe the Tillandsia exserta, which are huge and graceful and amazing - living plant sculptures.Of course these serve no purpose other than to be beautiful. I made these metal swirly basket things (also a first for me) to hold the T. exsertas and two sold before I had a chance to label/price them. -- source link
#plant nursery#air plant#tillandsia