not an aroid question

From: Lester Kallus <lkallus at earthlink.net> on 1997.01.16 at 16:57:53(146) I'm going to be obnoxious and ask a non-aroid question here. I apologize but am going to be asking everywhere till I track down the info. While I was in Miami last week, I went to a nursery. There, I found a plant that I hadn't seen before. I bought 3 rooted cuttings of it. The owner called it a Mandanella. No, it's not a Mandevilla. I have several of those, know they used to be called Dipladenia and recognize them a mile away. I dragged out my copy of the Exotica to try to describe the plant. This is tougher than I thought. It has smooth edged (entire) elliptic shaped leaves that are arranged in an opposite pattern. The leaves are thick, have pinnate venation (although you can't see the sub-branches as shown in the Exotica). The leaf attachment is halfway between stalked and sessile though closer to sessile. The flowers are in my memory only and I haven't seen it for 5 days. What I recall, though, reminded me of some bromeliad flowers I've seen. I looked through the exotica, can't find the exact one it reminded me of, but the closest I can come is Aechmea gracilis. The mass of flowers was perhaps 4-5 inches long and 1 inch wide. They looked like pink match heads with blue tips. (...or was it blue matchheads with pink tips? No, I think the former.) +More So with this kind of a vague description, can anyone help? (I feel like some of the people I know who ask about a plant they have at home. "It's big and has pretty red flowers.") I apologize for diverting attention from aroids. Les

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