When and How to Propagate Bromeliads

16.12.2023 - 16:35 / gardenerspath.com / Kristine Lofgren

When and How to Propagate Bromeliads

It almost feels like bromeliads are begging you to propagate them.

They send out little miniature plants or “pups” that look just like the adults. They reproduce so readily that they don’t even need you to help them, they’ll do it themselves.

Your job is mostly to move the offsets to a different container, if that’s what you want.

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Obviously, I’m making the process sound a bit easier than it is, but only a little. It’s mostly a matter of timing plus a dash of patience.

Whether your bromeliad’s lifecycle is almost over and its sending out offshoots or you just want to give those ever-present young pups their own place to root, here’s what we’ll talk about to help you propagate bromeliads:

In this guide, we’re going to focus on propagating pups, but you can also propagate bromeliads from seed that you collect from spent flowers.

The risk of starting from seed is that many bromeliads on the market are hybrids, and seeds from hybrids might be sterile, or they won’t grow true to the parent plant.

That means you have no way of knowing what the new plant will look like. It might be smaller, larger, a different color, less hardy, have smaller flowers, or a number of other differences.

First, let’s start by talking about how the bromeliad lifecycle works.

Plants that bloom once and then die are known as monocarpic.

Bromeliads, agave, and some other succulents are monocarpic perennials, which means they can live for years, but once they flower, they die.

Once the bromeliad blooms, it moves all its resources to support the flowers and seeds.

Bromeliad flowers