Chad Cox
Jane McGary (Sun, 25 Dec 2016 12:54:57 PST)

Nice to see PBS posts arriving again; the list host cut me off for a
couple of weeks.

I've grown a couple of Puya species (and flowered one of them, as I
recall in about 8 years) and have admired a number of others in South
America. I don't grow them any more because (1) they are not hardy
outdoors here in Portland, Oregon; (2) if grown in a container, it would
eventually have to be far larger than I could move (in particular, P.
raimondii gets gigantic); and (3) they have vicious hooked barbs on the
leaf margins and you don't want to get too close to them. When I moved
my potted ones outdoors for the summer, I had to wrap a tarp around the
plant to avoid the fishhooks.

The UC Berkeley Botanical Garden suffers frost rarely, and then it
usually isn't severe (barring what happened in 1990/1991, when plants
all over the Pacific Coast froze to death). More important, you can't
translate elevations in the Andes directly to North American USDA
"hardiness zones." At more temperate latitudes, the plants are likely to
spend their winters snug under the snow, and as you get nearer the
Equator, temperatures even at what seems (especially to a resident of
the Atlantic coast) as very high elevation are relatively moderate,
perhaps freezing at night and thawing in the daytime.

So my opinion is, don't try them outdoors in Boston! And if you want one
in your greenhouse, look for a smaller species, such as P. venusta
(which has beautiful glaucous foliage and purple flowers). In my
experience the seeds germinate readily.

Jane McGary

Portland, Oregon, USA

On 12/25/2016 8:19 AM, Paul LICHT wrote:

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