By Butcher 2008
This all started in Australia in 1984 when plants were coming from the USA as Neoregelia punctatissima based on the photograph in the Journal of the Bromeliad Society #6 p. 197 ( 1974) This had been taken by W. W. G. Moir of Hawaii. As Bill Morris pointed out in the Australian Journal . Bromeletter #2 p.8 (1984) there appeared to be no similarity between this plant and. the formal description in Lyman Smith's Monograph. This misidentification remains to this day as evidenced by photographs sent to http://fcbs.org for our Photo Index. All claims to have used this 'species' in hybrids has been covered in the Bromeliad Cultivar Registry by putting a ?punctatissima as the parent. You cannot even use the Cultivar convention by using single quotes and starting with the name with a capital letter such as 'Punctatissima' because of homonym problems. If you have seen the photograph by W W G Moir it is a plant with N. ampullacea traits and probably of hybrid origin. Perhaps someone who has used this clone in hybridising can advise whether it acts as a species when used at supposedly F1 level.
All the 'punctatissima' that I have dissected have been very close to N. ampullacea.
Traits I would be looking for are :
1. A conic-cylindric rosette (not tubular)
2. Leaves as per drawing.
3. Leaves with white markings.
4. White sepals ( not common in Neoregelia)
5. Long petals (as long as those at the bottom end of the range in the sub-genus Longipetalopsis)
6. As you can see this taxon started out being a Nidularium and there are not many in this Genus that look like Neoregelia ampullacea.
Perhaps this could be a challenge for the Brazilian growers to find out if this plant is still alive somewhere in Santa Teresa.
These wrongly identied plants from the 1970's and later are now recorded as Neoregelia 'Punctate' in the BCR. —SeeSmith & Downs 1979
