Tillandsia elongata var. subimbricata
Content
Description
Plant acaulescent, flowering 55 cm to over 150 cm, with a spreading or crateriform, mostly ca. 40 cm or taller, rosette of about 25light-green leaves. Leaves coriaceous, 30-60 cm long, much exceeded by the inflorescence; sheaths ample, contracted into the blade, elliptic, 5-13 x 3.5-8 cm, with narrow paler and chartaceous margins, (sub-) densely appressed-lepidote with white and darker centered scales, soon sparsely brown punctulate-lepidote toward the base inside, pale-brown to castaneous at the base and often suffused with dark-purple inside; blade arching and often recurved, very narrowly triangular, 18-46 x 1.7-4 cm, often involute at the margins when dry, filiform attenuate, (sub-) densely appressed-lepidote but soon less so or glabrescent at the upper side. Inflorescence sublaxly bi- to quadripinnate of 3 to many branches, 15-50(?) cm long; scape erect, 5-11 mm in diam., 0.3 to over 1 m long, glabrous, densely covered by bracts, but sometimes the bracts so narrow to expose the scape in part; scape bracts mostly densely imbricate, the lower ones with foliaceous blade, the upper ones ovate-lanceolate, with filiform blade to apiculate, excluding the blade to twice as long as the internodes, subdensely lepidote to glabrescent; axis exposed, at least in upper part, straight, terete, glabrous, mostly reddish; primary bracts as the upper scape bracts, or the upper ones as the floral bracts, spreading with the branches; spikes spreading, subsessile or with short bracteate peduncle, linear (-lanceolate), complanate, 5-18 x 0.7-1 cm, acute, densely and distichously 7-25-flowered, with one sterile bract at the apex; rachis partly exposed at the base of the bracts (if at all), slender, nearly straight, angled, glabrous; floral bracts contiguous or subspreading toward the apex when dry, imbricate, thin-coriaceous, with even surface, but strongly veined when dry, ovate (-oblong), 1.8-2 cm long, about twice as long as the internodes, much exceeding the sepals, fleshy in the middle and chartaceous at the margins, incurved at the extrem apex, apiculate, ecarinate, glabrescent or sparsely lepidote toward the apex, minutely brown-lepidote inside. Flowers erect, subsessile; receptacle obconic, bicarinate, including pedicel ca. 3 mm long; sepals coriaceous, with even surface, ovate-oblong, 1.1-1.3 cm long, with broad thin hyaline margins, broadly rounded, free, the posterior ones very fleshy and angled in the middle near the base, sparsely and minutely brown-lepidote only inside, red or yellowish and rose; petals thin, ligulate, ca. 1.7 cm long, violet in upper part; stamens just exceeded by the petals but exceeding the pistil(?), filaments thin, straight, flat, anthers basifixed, sagittate, ca. 4 mm long, free lobes less than 1 mm long, bidentate at the apex; ovary slenderly ovoid, ca. 4.5 mm long, contracted into the slender style, stigmas linear. Capsules cylindric, ca. 3.5 cm long and 3 mm in diam., attenuate from near the base to the apex, then abruptly subacute.
Distribution
E. Bolivar present, Guyana, Isla do Ajarani present, Jamaica present, N. Brazil present, Northern America, Rio Branco area present, Southern America: Brazil North (Roraima present); Peru (Peru present); Venezuela (Venezuela present)
Mexico and Jamaica to Peru and N. Brazil. 6 collections studied. This species is occasional on upper slopes of Cerro Toribio, E. Bolivar, Venezuela and has been recorded for the Rio Branco area, Isla do Ajarani, Roraima, Brazil. It may be expected in Guyana.