Do you have a passion for flowers?

Well, you need to be growing passion flowers. That's right. I went there.

Hello, my name is Jane Perrone and I'm the host of On the Ledge and in this week's show,

I talked to Rebecca Hilganhoff about this underrated group of house

plants and how to grow them. Plus, I answer a question about a happy hoia that won't flower.

How the heck are you? I hope that your week is proving fruitful. I just discovered I have onion white rot on my

perennial Welsh onions. So that's made me a little bit sad. But on the more positive side,

I've just got back from another day spent at Walton Hall in Warrington on the tilanzia plant trials that I'm involved with

for the RHS and just a quick snippet of fascinating information about tilanzias that I didn't know.

So have you seen those tilandias with the bulbous bottoms?

So I'm talking about ones like Bulbosa and Butsy Eye and Caput-Meducite. Well, here's the

fascinating fact. Did you know that like other houseplants that we grow, these are what are

called memecha fites. That means plants that have evolved to have an association with ants.

And the ants live in the leaf cavities in that bulbous part of the plant.

The ants help to remove or challenge the herbivores that might be eating the plants.

And in turn, the tilanzia provides a home for the ants, known as demartia. The ants also leave their

fecal deposits on the plant, which then the plant can turn into nutrients. So, so far, so

interesting, but what's the new fact? I asked a question about these bigger, more bulbous plants,

whether there's a greater risk of rotting

if people don't water them properly. So if you have grown tilanzas, you know they need to be

misted or wetted, but then you need to make sure that water doesn't sit on the leaves, so they rot away.

And I was wondering whether this was more of a problem

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