Houseplant ID

[Chickerdoodle13]

Wondering if anyone here is into horticulture and may be able to help me ID a mystery plant. Originally, I purcased this plant from my college's Spring plant sale because it came with a really nice pot. My original intentions were to throw away the plant and keep the pot (They were selling it for $5). Apparently, the plant was brought back many years ago from Jamaica by one of the biology professors. She had recently passed away and any plants of hers that had been left in the green house were being sold to students. I decided not to throw away the plant and nursed it back to health (it was a sad plant when I bought it!) Last year, it surprised me with a beautiful flower on Christmas. This year, it has three flower stalks and seems right on schedule to bloom between Christmas and New Years. Right now I only have a photo of last year's flower, but I will get a picture of the foliage as well. The foliage is mostly hard, spiky, light green leaves which look similar to bromeliad type growth, but grow straighter and a bit narrower.

Let me know if anyone has any ideas. I've searched, but haven't had much luck. The flowers themselves are beautiful!

 

[3goodeggs]

Without looking at the entire habit, I would guess a Ti plant. Google it and see if that is a match.
nope- I just googled ti plant flowers... and that's not it.
I will leaf though t tropical plant id book, but a shot of the entire plant would help.

 

[Chickerdoodle13]

Ah, I actually think I may have found what it is. Looks like it is Billbergia nutans or "Queen's Tears". Haha, I didn't expect to be able to find the answer on my own with so little information, but I would still love for this thread to help others ID mystery plants!

 

[Chickerdoodle13]

Here is what the rest of the plant looks like: Queen's Tears

Mine is a little more upright and stiff than these plants, but I'm assuming it may be a hybrid variety.

 

[3goodeggs]

Wow, I looked it up and their picture looks just about exactly like yours. How did you find it? Did you already know it was a bromeliad?


Actually that is a ti plant.
well, I guess I did not know that a Ti plant was a bromeliad.

 

[Chickerdoodle13]

I actually just started guessing that it may be a variety of bromeliad after I went downstairs to photograph the rest of it. When I brought up varieties of bromeliads, I started finding ones that looked similar to what I had, then with a little digging I found the species that matched it.

I think that search on google makes it look like a ti plant because for some reason it comes up in the search area. Not sure why, but I think it happened because I searched ti plant first, even though the pictures that come up was after a search I did for queen's tears. I think ti plant and bromeliads are two different species, though ti plants do look somewhat similar!

 

[3goodeggs]

They are separate families actually, but I get easily cowed, so when the Internet says I am wrong, I believe it.