It is a foggy morning and I am sitting here looking out the window at the back garden. I noticed that the bromeliads that are mounted on trees suffered no damage from our recent hard freeze. The temp was hovering in the mid twenties for about 7 hours for 3 days running. I did not try to protect anything in the trees. Another brom that was in a pot but set in the crotch of a tree did sustain freeze damage. Not sure but I suspect the moisture circulating in the tree itself is the same temp as the ground water and that provides some warmth for the plants where the roots are firmly attached to the bark.

On another note, although some of the broms in the ground, like Neo. Magali have white leaves from the cold, it will be interesting to see what happens in the spring. Will they die off or make new pups? The matchstick aechmeas took the freeze with a grain of salt, they never even blinked. Obviously, like some of the old timey pass-along billbergias, they are very hardy.

Bromeliads are pretty tough, I don't do anything to protect mine, but then we rarely go down into the 20's here. There can be so many reasons why one plant sustains damage and why another doesn't, moisture, frost, wind, heating from morning sun, age and condition of plant...etc. Pretty good that mid 20's for that duration your mounted bromeliads did so well. We only went down to 30F here two nights, 3 hours first night and 7 the second night, third night we stayed in mid/upper 30's, my bromeliads were not fazed a bit, even the mounted.

As far as a pup emerging, I certainly would say since I've had pups come out from what I thought was a dead bromeliad for other reasons, then yes it is very possible. Mom plant protected those little nubs waiting to emerge.

Looks like I escaped damage from the December cold snap.
12/24/22 spent 2 hrs below freezing with a 30f low.
12/25/22 spent 3 hrs below freezing with a 30f low again.
Thankful to wind had no frost.
Blooming today in the garden..


The Brugmansia also suffered no damage.

Nice Scott, my Brugmansia took a hit, it is not protected by tree canopy, too bad because it was full of flowers. A hibiscus next to it also toasted, but both are putting out new growth already.