Tillandsia monadelpha
Content
Description
Plant acaulescent, flowering to 35 cm long, with a narrow-crateriform or subspreading, 15-25 cm tall, rosette, lustrous-green often purple-red tinged or striate. Leaves thin-chartaceous, 17-30 cm long, mostly exceeded by the inflorescence, densely and closely minutely lepidote throughout, with minute brown centered scales, lustrous-green, often the margins and the lower side purple-red striate; sheaths distinct, contracted into the blades, obovate or oblong, the outer ones nearly flat, 3-4 x 1.3-2.4 cm, with membranaceous margins; blades slightly arching, very narrowly triangular (sublinear), 16-25 x 0.7-1.2 cm, (long) attenuately acute. Inflorescence simple, often becoming soon lateral because of the new offshoot, 20-31 cm long; scape erect, 14-22 cm long, 1-2 mm in diam., glabrous, partly visible because of the narrow bracts; scape bracts erect, imbricate, chartaceous, oblong, the lower ones with foliaceous blades, the upper ones obscurely apiculate and less than twice as long as the internodes, sparsely lepidote toward the apex; spike ovate or ovate-lanceolate in outline (at anthesis), 4-11 cm long, acutish or irregular, distichously 5-22-flowered, appearing lax by the spreading of the flowers, with a few imbricate sterile bracts at the base and apex, lustrous dark-green; rachis wholly visible, more or less geniculate, bluntly angled (sharply angled and often rugose when dry), glabrous; floral bracts clasping the flowers, subcoriaceous, with veined surface only when dry, ovate, 1.3-1.6 cm long, about three times as long as the internodes, about equaling the sepals, obscurely apiculate, carinate and lepidote toward the apex. Flowers much spreading, nocturnal, sessile; receptacle stout, posteriorly ca. 3 mm long, alate-angled; sepals thin-coriaceous, with veined surface, oblong, 1.3-1.6 cm long, acute or short apiculate, almost free, the posterior ones alate-carinate, sparsely lepidote and slightly incurved at the apex; petals narrowly ligulate, to 2.5 cm long, acutish(?), the blade reflexed or spreading, white; stamens deeply included, ca. 8 mm long, the longest ones exceeding the pistil by the anthers, filaments broad and flat, for about 1/3 conglutinate and forming a tube, straight, attenuate, anthers dorsifixed(?), ca. 2 mm long; ovary ovoid, bluntly angled, (evenly) contracted into the short alate-angled style, stigma lobed. Capsule slenderly cylindric, 4-5.5 cm long, 3-4 times as long as the bracts, sharply angled toward the apex, somewhat rounded, then attenuately long beaked.