Tillandsia fendleri
Content
Description
Plant acaulescent, including inflorescence up to 2 m long, with a dense crateriform or funnelform, ca. 25-60 cm tall rosette of manypale-green leaves. Leaves thin-coriaceous, (26-)40-100 cm long, often much exceeded by the scape; sheaths ample but often not very distinct, merging into the blades, elliptic, broadly convex, 10-34 x (6-)9-15 cm, densely punctulate-lepidote, pale-green, often tinged with red, brownish inside; blades arching, ligulate or narrowly triangular-ovate, 15-75 x 3.5-10 cm, ttenuately subacute or acuminate, sparsely and minutely-, or punctulate-lepidote, often soon glabrescent on the upper side, pale-green, sometimes glaucous or purple-red spotted. Inflorescence mostly loosely bipinnate of 10-15 polystichously arranged spikes, but sometimes simple or subdigitate from a few spikes, 0.5 to about 2 m long; scape erect, 30-60 cm long, 0.6 to over 1.5 cm in diam., densely covered by its bracts; scape bracts erect, densely imbricate, the lower ones often long-laminate, becoming shorter upward, sometimes soon bladeless and then more ovate and acuminate, much exceeding the internodes, glabrescent, pale-green and sometimes reddish at the base; axis elongate, straight or nearly so, subterete, glabrous, yellow-green to reddish; primary bracts spreading or reflexed with the branches, the lower ones as the upper scape bracts, the upper ones more ovate, acuminate, mostly exceeding the peduncle of the spikes, yellow to reddish with pale-green blade; peduncle often decurved, 1-10(-15) cm long (peduncle of the apical spike often elongate and densely bracteate), glabrous, if short then only prophyllate, else entirely hidden by its bracts; peduncle bracts as the floral bracts, but polystichous and smaller, imbricate, much exceeding the internodes; spikes spreading or sometimes suberect, often subpendulous, oblong to (linear-) lanceolate, complanate, 10-20(-32) x 2.5-4(-6.5) cm, acute, densely and distichously 4-17-flowered, with a few reduced sterile bracts at the base and apex; rachis hidden at anthesis, slightly flexuous, angled (rugose when dry), glabrous; floral bracts erect, densely imbricate, rigid-coriaceous, with even or finely veined surface toward the apex (when dry), obovate or elliptic, 3-5.5 cm long, 3-5 times as long as the internodes, shorter than, to exceeding the sepals, membranaceous at the margins, rounded and apiculate, more or less (if at all) carinate and strongly incurved at the apex, subglabrous, yellowish to orange-red. Flowers contiguous, sessile; receptacle obconic, ca. 2 mm long, angled; sepals coriaceous, with even or finely veined surface (when dry), oblong, 3-5 cm long, with narrow membranaceous margins, obtuse or broadly acute, somewhat incurved at the extreme apex, free, posterior ones carinate, glabrescent or obscurely appressed-lepidote, sparsely and minutely lepidote inside; petals ligulate, ca. 4.5 cm long, violet; stamens included, unequal, the longest (ca. 3.5 cm) exceeding the pistil by most part of the anthers, anthers basifixed, slender, ca. 1 cm long; ovary very slenderly ovoid, ca. 1 cm long, attenuate, contracted into the slender style, stigmas linear. Capsule broadly cylindric, to 5 cm long, about equaling the bracts, attenuate, short-beaked.