Tillandsia kegeliana
Content
Description
Plant acaulescent, 9-14 cm tall, with a small crateriform or spreading rosette of manycinereous-green leaves. Leaves 7-15 cm long, exceeding the inflorescence, stiff-chartaceous and often involute-subulate when dry; sheaths ample, but not always distinct, chartaceous, merging or contracted into the blades, (broadly) ovate, scarcely inflated-convex, 2.5-3.5 x 1.5-2.7 cm, densely and closely appressed- or punctulate-lepidote, with brown centered scales, pale-green outside, often purple-red inside; blades arching and often turning secund, thin-coriaceous, very narrowly triangular, 5-12 x 0.5-1.4 cm, often with purple-red margins, attenuately acute, densely appressed-lepidote, soon partly less so at the upper side. Inflorescence (sub-)pendulous, simple, 8-14 cm long; scape often strongly curved downward, 3-9.5 cm long, 1-3 mm in diam., glabrous or sparsely lepidote at the apex, concealed by its bracts and the leaves; scape bracts erect or the blade secund, imbricate, ovate to lanceolate, with the foliaceous blades exceeding the scape, (sub)densely cinereous-lepidote; spike ascending, fan-like, very strongly complanate, 2.5-5 x 3-4.5 cm, emarginate or subacute, densely and distichously 2-5(-8)-flowered (appearing subdense when dry), with a few imbricate sterile bracts at the base and one at the apex; rachis very short, hidden at anthesis, flexuous, bluntly angled, minutely lepidote; floral bracts somewhat spreading with the flowers, imbricate at anthesis, but the upper ones with free tips, coriaceous, with even or faintly veined surface when dry, (broadly) ovate, 2.4-2.8 cm long, 4-5 times as long as the internodes, much exceeding and closely enfolding the sepals, with very broadmembranaceous margins, apiculate, ecarinate, but sharply conduplicate (appearing alate), incurved, sparsely and minutely lepidote, lustrous-green with reddish margins to wholly reddish. Flowers tubular-erect, (sub-) sessile; receptacle obconic, alate-angled when dry, ca. 2-3 mm long; sepals thin-coriaceous, with finely veined surface only when dry, elliptic or oblong, 1.6-1.9 cm long, obscurely apiculate, slightly incurved at the extreme apex, almost free, posterior ones bluntly carinate at the base, sparsely and minutely brown-lepidote, less so inside; petals slightly turning downward (secund), lanceolate, 3-4 cm long, obtuse, purple-red; stamens just exserted, the shorter 3 about equaling and the longer 3 exceeding the pistil and petals, filaments slender, terete, at least near the apex, green, anthers dorsifixed (at 1/2), sagittate, ca. 2 mm long; ovary ovoid, ca. 5 mm long, tapering or contracted into the slender style. Capsule cylindric, to over 5 cm long, attenuate, apiculate.