When Virginia Azevedo repotted her first orchid at Bird Rock Tropicals in 1998, she had no idea where her new adventure would lead. At that time she didn't know she would be shipping plants all over the world every week, or that she would be trusted to care for some of the world's most rare and exotic plants. She also didn't know she was starting a 20+ year adventure that would lead her to managing one of the most well known and well respected Tillandsia nurseries in the world. On August 31st, that adventure comes to a bittersweet end as Virginia retires to enjoy camping, traveling, gardening ..read more

You will be surprised at how easy it is to use and at the quality of the images. The best part is that it is very inexpensive and you can easily carry it so it is always with you.  has a new KickStarter project.  They are going to expand their line.   Currently they offer only one lens, 4x. They will be creating a 2x and 10x magnification lens.  I like the product so much that I am a backer.  If you want to get one now, use my link to order yours.  It makes a great stocking stuffer. Check out their KickStarter project (FYI, Affiliate links in this post ..read more

This Summer has been one of the hottest yet!  And to top it off in California we are experiencing our  longest drought.  Sprinklers are reduced to 10 minutes per station, only 3 days per week.  All the lawns are starting to turn brown.  At the nursery we can continue to water, as we have always done our watering by hand and that is not restricted.  We always use, and recommend using, the Fogg-It Nozzles.  They are available in 1, 2, and 4 gallons per minute.  We use the 2 GMP on seedlings and the 4 GMP on everything else.  The nozzles produce a heav ..read more

Get ready to change the labels on many of your plants, but don't remove the old name. You never know when that name may be resurrected.  An ongoing study of Bromeliaceae, by a group of cooperating scientists, has lead to proposed new reclassifications for subfamily Tillandsiodeae. Using DNA sequencing, in combination with morphological characteristics, they determine which species have common ancestors. The authors are proposing further taxonomic splits to a number of genera to form monophyletic classifications. , has done an excellent job explaining all these changes. For more in-depth ..read more

After personal discussion with Dr. Michael Barfuss he has assured me that this is a species in its own right. So now the name reverts to  This blog post was posted in July 2022. At that time the name change had been accepted for more than six months by the authorities who maintain the Bromeliad Taxon list of current names ( i was on that list.  In October 2022, those same authorities decided that this variety should not have be elevated to species level, and the name reverted to  ​Someone got promoted to SPECIES status!  was first described by Mulford B. Foster in 1957. Fos ..read more