The Huntington Botanical Gardens (HBG) is known for many things--its world class desert gardens, the Blue Boy painting, an outstanding collection of rare books, a Japanese garden and a new Chinese garden--the list goes on. Less well known is the fact the desert gardens contain a wealth of Puya, Hechtia, Deuterocohnia and Dyckia, most of which bloom in the spring and early summer.

[Editor's note: The Huntington Botanical Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens is located in San Marino, California--near Los Angeles. For more information on the various gardens and other collections held this institution, please visit the official web site www.huntington.org]

Long time readers with great memories may already know this. William Hertrich, then Curator Emeritus of the HBG, wrote an article about these bromeliads in the garden for this Journal in 1953 (Hertrich 1953). His successor, Myron Kimnach, followed up with another piece 19 years later (Kimnach 1972). It has been over forty years since the more recent article, and many of the plants mentioned at that time have grown into fantastic specimens. Early collections were made as far back as the mid-1930's-on various expeditions to the Andes by T. Harper Goodspeed of the University of California and one of his traveling companions, James West. Some of these early collections still remain unidentified.

In later years, many Puya and Dyckia at HBG were found on explorations by Myron Kimnach in Bolivia and Peru, and numerous Hechtia were collected on expeditions in Mexico, often with Gary Lyons who is still a curator at HBG. Myron started his career at the U. of California Botanical Garden, and many of HBG Puya came from there. Bill Baker is renowned in the Bromeliad world for his stunning Dyckia hybrids; less well known is that he did considerable field work, and many bromeliads at HBG were collected on those travels. Recently, some new species have been contributed by Professor Rachel Jabaily, who spent time studying Puya at the HBG a few years back as a graduate student and identified many of the unknown specimens. In fact, some of the HBG specimens shown in this article were included in her DNA studies.

This article will focus on Puya and their spectacular inflorescences. The best months to see the Puya blooms were April and May, at least in 2014, though some bloomed as early as January. Almost all had finished by July, except for P. mirabilis which seems to be a late bloomer, and a couple of others. Interestingly, most of the Hechtia tended to bloom later, and some were still blooming in September.

Puya are generally too large for hobbyists to grow, and as a result are not all that well known. In fact, of the many thousands of man-made bromeliad hybrids, only a couple of man-made Puya hybrids have been registered, although there are some natural hybrids. Included within Puya is the largest bromeliad, the massive P. raimondii, while a few are quite small--one shown later in this article has leaves only 6-8...