Vriesea
Content
Description
Acaulescent and usually epiphytic herbs. Leaves rosulate, entire; blades predominantly ligulate and inconspicuously lepidote; leaf scales centrally symmetric. Inflorescence various, usually of distichous-flowered spikes, rarely of one- or more polystichous-flowered spikes; scape usually conspicuous; floral bracts generally ample. Flowers perfect, mostly short-pedicellate, becoming secund in many species; sepals convolute, free or nearly so, symmetric or subsymmetric; petals free or connate in a tube much shorter than the sepals, bearing 2 ligules at the base (not always, see below), firm and erect or soon flaccid and drooping; stamens included or exserted; ovary nearly or quite superior; ovules many, usually caudate. Fruit capsular, seeds fusiformwith a long straight basal coma (white in Guianan species).
Notes
KEY: For practical reasons, pointed out before, the species of