Tillandsia tenuifolia
Description
Plant often long-caulescent, 5-20 cm long or longer (then only partly with living leaves), with many polystichously, densely arranged, rigid, pale lustrous-green leaves. Leaves 7-15 cm long, mostly exceeding the scape; sheaths very small and indistinct, merging into the blade, chartaceous, subdeltoid, densely imbricate, 1-1.5 cm wide, with membranaceous margins, cinereous-lepidote, but soon glabrous toward the base; blades suberect or slightly arching, often secund, rigid-coriaceous, very narrowly triangular, finely carinate, 6-14 x 0.7-1 cm, long-attenuately acute (involute-subulate when dry), densely and closely appressed-lepidote. Inflorescence simple, 9-15 cm long; scape erect or curved downward, 5-10(-14) cm long, ca. 2 mm in diam., largely concealed by bracts and leaves; scape bracts erect, densely imbricate, chartaceous, elliptic, caudate, the upper ones more apiculate or acute, about twice as long as the internodes, glabrous except for the apex, rose; spike slenderly ovoid or cylindric, 2.5-5.5 x 1-1.5 cm, acute or abruptly ending, (sub-) densely and polystichously 4-15-flowered, often with 1-2 reduced sterile bracts at the apex; rachis hidden or partly exposed by the lower bracts, straight, angled when dry, glabrous; floral bracts like the upper scape bracts, clasping the flowers, the upper ones mostly loosely imbricate, submembranaceous, with even or finely veined surface when dry, 1.2-1.9 cm long, becoming smaller toward the apex, 3-6 times as long as the internodes, exceeding the sepals, ecarinate, deep lustrous-pink. Flowers divergent at anthesis, sessile; sepals submembranaceous, with even surface, lanceolate, 1.3-1.5 cm long, attenuately subacute, the posterior ones more than 2/3 connate and carinate, slightly incurved at the apex, glabrous; petals ligulate, ca. 2.5 cm long, the blade divergent at the apex, oblong, broadly obtuse, white (sometimes pale-blue or rose?); stamens all alike, emerging from the throat of the corolla, exceeding the pistil by half of the anthers, filaments transversely plicate halfway, thin and flat, anthers dorsifixed, ca. 3 mm long; ovary ovoid, ca. 5 mm long, rounded and constricted into the slender style. Capsule cylindric, to 2.5 cm long, much exceeding the bracts, rounded and short-beaked.