Plant in bright shade, part sun and coastal full sun (best in light shade) and water regularly. Hardy to 26 F. Can be grown in the ground in a well-drained soil where it spreads freely to form large dense clumps and it also makes a nice container specimen.

x Cryptbergia 'Red Burst' is an intergeneric bromeliad hybrid that resulted from crossing Billbergia nutans with Cryptanthus bahianus. American horticulturist and naturalist Theodore Luqueer Mead (1852-1936) created several hybrids between Cryptanthus and Billbergia at his Florida home in the 1920s and it is believed that x Cryptbergia was the first intergeneric bromeliad hybrid ever created. The first written mention of the cross between the two genera was when Mulford Foster (1888-1978), the self-taught American botanist known by many as the "Father of the Bromeliad", wrote about Meads crosses in 1952 in the Bromeliad Society Bulletin, which he was then editor of. The following year the book Bromeliads in Cultivation by Bob and Catherine Wilson included a chapter on hybrids where they stated "Cryptbergia (sometimes referred to as Billtanthus) is a hybrid genus of crosses made between Cryptanthus and Billbergia" though when noted Southern California garden historian and Bromeliad author Victoria Padilla (1905-1986) wrote about the plant in the Bromeliad Society Bulletin, she chose to call it Billbergia x Meadii. In 1975 botanist Lyman Smith and Robert William Read formalized the name x Cryptbergia in Phytologia (V30 N5), crediting the name to Bob and Catherine Wilson. The name "rubra" incorrectly used as a specific epithet for this was also corrected by Smith and Read in this article and the cultivar name 'Red Burst' was assigned. In 2012, writing in the The Journal of the Bromeliad Society (62:4) Dereck Butcher noted that crosses between Cryptanthus and Billbergia were described in a nursery catalog in 1947 as x Biltanthus prior to it receiving the assigned name x Cryptbergia and that this name should take precedence.

Though this plant is now listed as x Biltanthus 'Red Burst' on the Bromeliad Cultivar Register, we continued to list it under the name x Cryptbergia while we grew and sold it from 2008 until we closed the nursery in 2025. We thank Santa Barbara horticulturist Margie Tyre for first introducing us to this plant in 2005 and for providing three 1 gallon plants from her Entyrely Awesome Plants nursery for propagation stock (under the name x Cryptbergia 'Rubra'). 

The information displayed on this page about Cryptbergia 'Red Burst' is based on our research conducted about this plant from books in our nursery library as well as from information that is provided by reliable online resources. We also have included our own observations made about it as it grew in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers when we had them in our nursery field. We also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.