Tillandsia geminiflora
Content
Description
Plant acaulescent or very short caulescent, 12-24 cm tall, with a small but dense rosette of many bright-green leaves, the lower ones often reflexed. Leaves thin (soft), 11-18 cm long, mostly about equaling the inflorescence, sometimes much shorter, somewhat silvery green; sheaths very small and inconspicuous, merging into the blades, with broad membranaceous margins, soon glabrous toward the base, pale; blades arching, very narrowly triangular, 10-18.4 x 0.7-1.5 cm, (filiform-) attenuate, very densely subappressed-lepidote, but soon partly less so at the upper side. Inflorescence (sub-) pendent, bipinnate of 4-16 polystichously arranged spikes (apical spikes reduced to one-flowered spikes), 11-20 cm long, dense or subdense at least toward the apex, fertile part ovoid; scape curving downward, flaccid, 7-13 cm long, ca. 2-3 mm in diam., densely covered by bracts; scape bracts erect, imbricate, linear, the upper ones more ovate-lanceolate and filiform-caudate, densely appressed-lepidote, pale silvery green often tinged with rose; axis partly exposed at the base, nearly straight, angled to subterete at the base; primary bracts as the upper scape bracts, (sub-)spreading with the spikes, the lower ones mostly exceeding the spikes, the upper ones becoming much smaller, more ovate-oblong and attenuately subacute; peduncle of the lower spikes to 1.8 cm long, the upper ones much shorter, sharply angled when dry, naked, lepidote or glabrous; spikes oblong or irregular, complanate, 1.6-2.6 cm long and ca. 1 cm wide, (sub-)densely and distichously 2-3-flowered, with one much reduced sterile bract at the apex (or rachis with a sort appendix); rachis exposed, slightly to strongly flexuous, angled, lepidote or glabrous; floral bracts subspreading with the flowers, subchartaceous, with veined surface only when dry, ovate (-oblong), 0.8-1.9 cm long, about twice as long as the internodes, much exceeded by the sepals (except for the flowers on the main axis), acuminate, carinate (sharply when dry), appressed-lepidote, pale-green with red toward the apex. Flowers contiguous to each other and the rachis (often not so when dry), narrowly funnelform, sessile; sepals thin-coriaceous, with even surface, lanceolate, ca. 1.3 cm long, membranaceous at the margins, attenuately subacute, anteriorly short-connate, posterior ones about 1/4 connate and carinate (bluntly when fresh), nearly straight except near the apex, sparsely appressed-lepidote, tinged with rose at the apex; petals lingulate, ca. 1.8 cm long, the blade spreading, rose; stamens included, all equal in length, exceeded by the full mature pistil (protandrous), filaments flat, membranaceous, plicate in upper part, anthers dorsifixed (at 1/5), ca. 2-3 mm long; ovary subglobose, abruptly contracted into the slender style, stigmas linear, to 1 mm long. Capsule slenderly cylindric, ca. 2 cm long and much exceeding the floral bracts, abruptly rounded and short-beaked.