Tillandsia paraensis
Content
Description
Plant acaulescent, flowering 12-40 cm long, with an elongate pseudobulb or a narrow-utriculate, 10-30(-37) cm long rosette of 10-25cinereous leaves. Leaves 10-35 cm long, often exceeding the inflorescence or at least the scape, very densely subappressed-lepidote throughout, the outer ones much reduced and sheathlike; sheaths ample, but not very distinct, merging into and concolorous with the blades, stiff-coriaceous, ovate, inflated-convex, 3-7 x 1.7-3 cm, with membranaceousoften purple-red margins; blades suberect or arching, fleshy (succulent) coriaceous, very narrowly triangular, often finely carinate on both sides, 6-25(-33) x 1.4-2 cm, attenuate and often involute toward the apex when dry, abruptly pungent. Inflorescence simple (or rarely compound of two spikes), 10-30(-40) cm long; scape often curved, 8-19 cm long, 2-3.5 mm in diam., sparsely floccose or subglabrous, concealed by its bracts and the leaves, or elongate and partly exposed; scape bracts erect, densely imbricate to remote, chartaceous, ovate, the lower ones long laminate, the upper ones more apiculate, (densely) appressed-lepidote or floccose, at least at the apex; spikes mostly curved, linear (-lanceolate), complanate, 6-15(-20) x 1-1.5 cm, acute, subdensely and distichously 4-15-flowered, rarely with more than one sterile bract at the apex; rachis only partly hidden at anthesis, but often wholly exposed when dry, more or less flexuous, sharply angled when dry, sparsely floccose or subglabrous; floral bracts clasping the flower scarcely imbricate (if at all), so narrow to expose the rachis in part, subchartaceous, with even or veined surface when dry, (broadly) elliptic, 2.3-3.9 cm long, less than twice to 4 times as long as the internodes, equaling to much exceeding the sepals, obtuse or the lower ones minutely apiculate, ecarinate, scarcely incurved, densely lepidote or subglabrous, often yellow-green, tinged with red or wholly reddish. Flowers erect or subspreading, distichous, subsessile; involucre obconic, ca. 2 mm long, angled (?); sepals thin-coriaceous, with veined surface only when dry, ovate-oblong, 1.5-2.3 cm long, obtuse or subacute, free, sparsely and minutely lepidote; petals erect except for the slightly divergent apex, linear-lanceolate, 3.3-6.5 cm long, attenuate, obtuse, pink-rose; stamens exserted, or about equaling the petals, unequal in length, equaling the pistil (?), filaments straight, flat, subterete at the apex, anthers dorsifixed (slightly below 1/2), ca. 4.5 mm long; ovary slenderly ovoid, evenly contracted into the slender style. Capsule (slenderly) cylindric, 3-6(-7) cm long, 2-4 times as long as the bracts, long attenuately beaked.