Features:
Common name: Puya Chagual, Chagualillo
Family: Bromeliads
Origin: South America
Height at maturity: 1 meter
Hardiness: -10°C
Exposure: sunny
Plant type: flowering plant
Vegetation: perennial
Foliage: evergreen
Flowering: summer
Flower color: blue purple
Type of soil: draining, clayey, sandy, stony, humus
Watering: regular
Use: in the garden, isolated, pot, veranda, greenhouse
Diseases and Pests:-
Toxicity: –
Storage of seeds: 2 years in a dry place away from light at 3/4°C (refrigerator)
Description:
A plant with spiny leaves, this puya grows to a height of 1 meter.
It is composed of a form of herbaceous rosette about forty centimeters high. From this rosette, appears in summer, a pink-red flower stalk producing superb tubular flowers of 5cm, in blue-violet colors.
This plant likes draining and poor soils. Its roots only serve to keep it in the ground. Indeed, the puya does not only water itself via the ground like other plants but it draws a large part of the water it needs from the atmosphere via its leaves.
The puya can grow in the ground in warm regions such as those in the south of France. In regions such as the north of France, it is preferable to grow it in a pot to be brought in in winter.
In order to obtain an ideal germination, it is imperative to sow the seeds on a substrate composed of 50% sandy compost and 50% cactus substrate. Place the seeds on this mixture and cover them with a pinch of the substrate.
Then water them with a sprayer so as not to bring out or push the seeds in with too ”violent” watering. Germination is erratic and can take between 15 days and several weeks for the same batch of seeds.
