I was walking through the Chinese New Year plant market a few days ago and pounced upon an expected find amongst the many familiar festive plants that were on sale.
It was a plant that was clearly a bromeliad. The soft leaves were unarmed and the first thing that came to my mind was that this plant may either be an Viresea or Guzmania. In fact, plants from these two genera can be found nearby this bromeliad.
The inflorescence this bromeliad that was produced straight-away told me that it belongs to neither genera. I asked the salesperson what the ID of the plant and she was helpful enough to assist me in the search through her pile of papers and later, wrote me on a piece of paper which said “Catopsis“.
A search through the FCBS website did yield some leads. The inflorescences shown in the pictures on the website confirmed that the plant I bought was indeed a Catopsis, but the identity of the exact species was a little trickier.
Upon closer examination of the plants I bought, I found that it had some white wax at the base of the rosette of leaves. I remembered seeing something on Tropiflora.com’s website (http://www.tropiflora.com/creport/cr15-1/p3.html) where it offered something similar to the appearance of my plants for sale on one of their their past Cargo Reports. On it, the plant was labelled as Catopsis morreniana.
To many, this bromeliad has nothing appealing to look at. The flowers are not especially spectacular and the leaves are just green. When not in flower, it just looks like a bunch of leaves. I got it because it was something special. Something much simpler in terms of appearance amongst the colour parade put up by my other bromeliads grown in my bed room.
