Tillandsia stricta
Content
Description
Plant short caulescent (sometimes with longer dead part), 12-18 cm tall, with many leaves, cinereous-green and often tinged with purple. Leaves somewhat fleshy, flexible, 7-15 cm long, shorter than to exceeding the inflorescence, densely appressed-lepidote; sheaths very small and inconspicuous, wider than the blade, with very broad membranaceous margins, soon glabrous toward the base; blades arching and often secund, very narrowly triangular, 7-15 x 0.6-1.2 cm, filiform-attenuate. Inflorescence simple, 8-14 cm long, mostly pendulous or erect; scape mostly decurved, often flaccid, 4-8.5 cm long, ca. 2 mm in diam., glabrous, often concealed by bracts and leaves; scape bracts erect, imbricate, the lower ones foliaceous, the upper ones more ellipticwith linear blades, mostly exceeding the scape or inflorescence by the blade, densely lepidote except for the base; spike ovoid or slenderly ellipsoid, 3-6 cm long, 1.5-2.5 cm in diam., obtuse or emarginate, densely and polystichously 8-25-flowered or sublax at the base, with a few sterile bracts at the apex; rachis sometimes partly exposed by the spreading bracts at the base, nearly straight, angled, glabrous; floral bracts suberect to spreading, loosely sheathing the flowers, the upper ones often imbricate, membranaceous, with veined surface when dry, elliptic, 0.9-1.8 cm long, becoming smaller toward the apex, 3-many times as long as the internodes, the lower ones filiform-laminate, the upper ones more apiculate or subacute, much exceeding the sepals, much inflated-convex, ecarinate, mostly glabrous except for the apex, but sometimes appressed-lepidote throughout, pale lustrous-green to bright rose-red. Flowers (sub-)spreading, free of the bracts, narrowly funnelform, sessile; receptacle rounded-obconic, ca. 1.5 mm long, angled; sepals membranaceous, with faintly veined surface (only when dry), oblong, ca 1 cm long, obtuse and obscurely apiculate, or subacute, evenly connate for ca. 1.5 mm, posterior ones with a thickened midvein (bluntly angled), glabrous on both sides; petals ligulate, 1.5-2 cm long, divergent at the apex, obtuse to broadly rounded, blue or purple; stamens all equal in length, deeply included, exceeding the pistil by most part of the anthers, filaments more or less plicate in the middle, membranaceous-ligulate, anthers basifixed, 1.5-3 mm long; ovary suborbicular ca. 2.5 mm long, much contracted into the slender style, stigmas linear. Capsules slenderly cylindric, 3-4 cm long, abruptly rounded and short-beaked.