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Tillandsia Page HELLO VISITORS!!
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Tillandsia matudae

WELCOME !
My name is Shuko Kawamura and I live in Japan. I collect bromeliads,especially tillandsia species. I started growing them1996 and now have a collection of around 150 species of tillandsia, and many other bromeliads too. Here in Saitama Japan we have hot, humid summers with temperatures of 85-100 degrees F and cold, dry winters with frosts and temperatures of 15-30 degrees F. During the cold season, I keep some very hardy species outdoors but move most of my tillandsias indoors.

In Japan bromeliads didn't always have popularity very much. Though tillandsia is sold well, it isn't handled properly. It is common to dry up with being sold. But, tillandsia lovers increased after NEW TILLANDSIA HANDBOOK was put on sale. It increased tillandsia lovers that information learned to get it on the Internet, too. There is the Bromeliad Society of Japan. The number of the members is more than 100 people. A chairman is Ph.D Hiroyuki Takizawa who is the coauthor of NEW TILLANDSIA HANDBOOK. Of course I am a member of BSJ. I joined the BSJ when it was formed. We have a meeting about four times in the year. I am a member of the International Bromeliad Society, too. I participated in World Bromeliads Conference that it was held in San Francisco in 2000. It was a very wonderful experience. I will participate in WBC in Florida in 2002 as well.

I started designing this "TILLANDSIA WEBSITE" in the autumn of 1997. Because I do not speak English well, I am sorry that most of the pages are in Japanese and only a few are in English. If you notice any poor wording please send me a correction.

I was seeing tillandsia for the first time, I was six years old. It was spanish-moss(Tillandsia usneoides) sold in the gardening store. I asked my grandfather that he bought it for me. Though the strange plants were small pieces. I was sprayng very hard in spanish-moss. But, it didn't grow up... It never dried up any further. Because, it had already dried up when it was bought... Present I know that it dried up. I to be childish didn't think that a sold plant was dead.

The four seasons are in Japan very clearly. The heat of summer is said as more than the tropics. And, the coldness of winter is as much as ice forms and it snows. But, this is the climate of Japanese Kanto district. Japanese climate varies according to the district very much. Though Japan is a little country, a zone to the subarctic zone from the subtropical zone is contained. I live in Saitama Prefecture in the center of Kanto district. Here is almost as much as ZONE 9a when it is shown with USDA Plant Hardiness Zone. A coldness countermeasure is necessary for winter, and a heat countermeasure is necessary for summer.

I am not good at English. Translation software is being used for writing this English. Even if I write a cultivation process by the Japanese climate here, I don't think that it becomes the reference of you who is reading this page. If you want to know how to grow tillandsia, I recommend to check web-site of BSI or FCBS. URL is;
http://www.bsi.org
http://www.fcbs.org

However, it thinks that the photograph of tillandsia which I raised and which bloomed is inserted here to be good for telling you the beauty of tillandsia. Then, I want bromeliad lover of the foreign countries to know that many bromeliad lovers are in Japan as well.

I import bromeliads from each country, and sell it as a part-time worker. Please contact me if you could export bromeliads to Japan. I very welcome contact from the dealer in the wild area of bromeliad specially. Of course, contact from the dealer who sells bromeliad collected from the wild is very welcome, too.

Thanks!

E-mail to: hedgehog@k6.dion.ne.jp


English Page

I have aPICTURE Page (English). There is an alphabetical list with thumbnail picture. The thumbnails are 80*80 pixels. If you click thumbnail, you can see detailed picture (240*240 or 320*320 pixels).

and the other pictures areHERE! !


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