The question?
“Which houseplants can adapt to low light and don’t require frequent watering, but will flower anyway?”
It’s a question that tropical plant experts like Angel A. Lara hear regularly, particularly from those who have put other houseplants in jeopardy by subjecting them to this kind of no-frills regimen.
Unlike many houseplants, bromeliads tend to have “an easy disposition,” said Mr. Lara, the vice president for botanical horticulture at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, in Sarasota, Fla. That’s because many of the ones marketed as houseplants are epiphytes.
Mr. Lara speaks from extensive hands-on experience. Epiphytes from four plant families — bromeliads, orchids, Gesneriads and ferns — are the central focus of study at Selby, a renowned research facility and popular visitor attraction that is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
Most epiphytes, or air plants, don’t sink their roots into soil to absorb moisture and nutrients, Mr. Lara explained. Instead, they use their roots to attach themselves to other plants, especially trees and shrubs, or sometimes rocks.
Epiphytic bromeliads derive sustenance not from the ground but from the atmosphere, and from other living organisms. Their specialized design — whether it’s a central, vase-like tank formed by a rosette of leaves; complex cellular structures on the foliage called trichomes; or both — allows them to gather and conserve water. They also use their tanks to collect organic matter like insects or bits of leaves.
All of this amounts to “survival tactics,” Mr. Lara said.
With roughly 3,500 species — and probably 100,000 hybrids — bromeliads offer a staggering number of choices if you’re looking for a houseplant.
Mister Lara recommends Tropiflora Nursery or Bird Rock Tropicals as mail-order sources. You may find yourself easily seduced by a hot-pink earth star (Cryptanthus) or the showy pattern of venation on the foliage of some big, standout Vriesea.
Most bromeliads have a couple of things in common: They’re stemless, usually with a rosette structure. And they’re native, almost exclusively, to the New World tropics and subtropics. (Only one species hails from West Africa.) But for the last 500 years, since the discovery of the pineapple — a terrestrial species, not an epiphytic one — bromeliads have been moved around the globe.
