Guzmania squarrosa
Description
Plant acaulescent, ca. 40-60 cm tall or taller, with a rosette of many pale-green leaves. Leaves thin-coriaceous, ca. 60 cm long, normally exceeding the inflorescence, pale green and often purple-striate at the base; sheaths ample, elliptic or oblong, ca. 8 x 15 cm, densely brown-appressed-lepidote; blades arching, linear, 25-50 x 3-5.5 cm(sub-) rounded with pungent tip, sparsely appressed-lepidote. Inflorescence erect, polystichously bipinnate of about 15 short and hidden branches, ca. 50 cm long, the fertile part slenderly ovoid, dense sometimes slightly so below; scape ca. 30 cm long, stout, lepidote, hidden by bracts and the leaves; scape bracts erect, densely imbricate, foliaceous, the lower ones often exceeding the inflorescence, the upper ones decurved, greenish often with a broad transverse red band; axis hidden, straight, terete, lepidote; primary bracts with spreading apex, imbricate, the lower ones short laminate, the upper ones more broadly ovate, subrounded and apiculate, deeply including the flowers, densely appressed-lepidote except for the blade, bright-red; racemes (sub-)sessile, erect, ovoid, 2-3.4 x 1-1.4 cm, subtruncate, very densely and polystichously about 6-flowered; rachis much reduced; floral bracts erect, imbricate, membranaceous, with even surface, asymmetrically oblong, 1.3-2.5 cm long, about 7 times as long as the internodes, more or less exceeded by the sepals, obtuse or emarginate, incurved at the apex, weekly carinate, subdensely lepidote. Flowers erect, fasciculate, short-pedicellate (4-5 mm); sepals subcoriaceous, with even surface, linear-lanceolate, 1.5-2.3 cm long, with thin margins, obtuse to broadly rounded, slightly incurved at the apex, evenly nearly half connate, posterior ones bluntly carinate, lepidote on both sides; petals erect, fleshy (?), highly connate, ligulate, broadly rounded and cucullate, 2.5-4.8 cm long, yellow; stamens included, filaments highly adnate to the petal-tube, flat, free part dilated, about equaling the pistil, pale-green, anthers dorsifixed (at 1/2), 5-7 mm long, whitish; ovary ellipsoid, 4.5-6 mm long, abruptly contracted into the slender style, stigmas linear, ca. 2 mm long. Capsule subcylindric, ca. 3 cm long, distinctly three-ribbed, triangular-beaked; coma deep reddish-brown.