What is up everyone? We are back on Air Plant Week here on the Epic Gardening

podcast. I'm joined again by Josh Rosen of Air Plant Man. You can find his

website at Air Plant Man.com. So we learned yesterday how air plants function, how they have that name, why they have that name,

why they have that name. But what we're going to talk about today is where they actually grow in the wild

because if we can understand that then we can try to replicate some of those

conditions at least in our gardens to actually take care of these plants in a

way that that makes sense for them

so Josh where can we find these in the wild?

Telansia or air plants naturally occur only in the new world from the southern United States all the way down through South America.

And so this encompasses a really wide range of environments.

And so everywhere from deserts to rainforest you'll find

different species of Telansia that have adapted to live there. In general though they're

all going to want the same basic considerations of bright filtered sunlight.

Some species that have a grayer leaf color are going to be able to be adapted to a higher level of

intensity of sunlight and others with kind of wider darker green leaves will take

the lower light of the rainforest. But if you're caring for them in your home or

garden, bright filtered light to within a few feet of a window, under a tree

getting full morning sun are sort of good general rules of them, although where you are

specifically in the world will affect the details of that.

And they, I had the opportunity recently to go on a trip, a habitat trip down to Mexico to see these

Calansia growing on their home turf and, you know, as a long-term collector and grower it was beyond inspiring to get to see them in their home habitat and it was just shocking to see how diverse the environments were that they could inhabit.

Yeah, I can imagine. Was that your first time doing a trip like that where you could see them all in their

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