Tillandsia bulbosa
Content
Description
Plant acaulescent, 10-30 cm tall, very variable in size and color, often aggregated, the sheaths greatly inflated, forming a small, compact ovoid pseudobulb. Leaves 8-15, the outer ones often reduced and sheath-like, 8-30 cm long, mostly exceeding the inflorescence; sheaths ample, abruptly constricted into the blades, stiff-coriaceous, orbicular, greatly inflated, 1.5-3.5 cm wide, densely appressed-lepidote toward the apex, brownish to silvery green at the apex, often purple- or red-banded at the margins; blades often spreading or reflexed, mostly flexuous, fleshy coriaceous, involute-subulate, 10-25 cm long, 1-5 mm in diam., attenuate, pungent, minutely appressed-lepidote, pale to very dark lustrous-green. Inflorescence simple or subdigitately compound of 2-5 polystichously arranged spikes, 7.5-23 cm long, subdense, orange-red or green; scape erect, 5-15 cm long, densely covered by bracts; scape-bracts densely involute-subulate, with foliaceous blades, exceeding the inflorescence, the upper ones often orange-red in part; axis short, but exposed between the spreading bracts, angled, lepidote, often pale-rose; primary bracts as the upper scape bracts, but the upper ones more ovate and acuminate, clasping the spikes, the lower ones often exceeding the spikes with the foliaceous blades; spikes short pedunculate (ca. 0.5 cm), suberect or spreading, lanceolate, complanate, 2.5-5 x 0.7-1 cm, acute, densely and distichously 3-6-flowered, often with one sterile bract at the base and apex; rachis slightly exposed by the narrow bracts, nearly straight, sharply angled (dry), lepidote; floral bracts erect, somewhat incurved at the apex, imbricate, subcoriaceous, ovate, 1.1-1.9 cm long, 2-4 times as long as the internodes, much exceeding the sepals, acute, (obscurely) carinate, densely lepidote. Flowers tubular-erect, contiguous, sessile; receptacle obconic, ca. 1 mm long; sepals thin and stiff, with veined surface (only when dry), oblong, 1-1.2 cm long, with broad veinless margins, obtuse and obscurely apiculate, posteriorly more or less connate (1/4) and bluntly angled at the base, glabrous; petals linear, to 4 cm long, acute, blue-violet or rarely white; stamens much exceeding the petals, the longest (3) about equaling or shorter than the pistil, filaments straight(?), flat, the exceeding part dilated and terete, anthers dorsifixed (at 1/3), 2.5 mm long; ovary ovoid, 4 mm long, tapering into the slender style. Capsules slenderly cylindric, to 4 cm long, more than twice as long as the floral bracts, abruptly short-beaked.