Tillandsia canescens Sw.
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Authority
Smith, Lyman B. & Downs, Robert J. 1977. Tillandsioideae (Bromeliaceae). Fl. Neotrop. Monogr. 14 (2): 663-1492. (Published by NYBG Press)
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Family
Bromeliaceae
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Scientific Name
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Type
Type. Swartz s n (holotype BM, GH photo), without exact locality, Jamaica.
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Description
Description - Plant stemless, less than 20 cm high. Leaves numerous in a narrowly crateriform rosette, to 23 cm long, densely and minutely appressed-lepidote throughout; sheaths ovate, 3-6 cm long, brown; blades linear-triangular, attenuate, flat for most of their length, to 1 cm wide at the base. Scape erect or ascending, slender; scape-bracts erect, imbricate, the lower foliaceous, the upper broadly ovate, their foliaceous blades elongate but shorter than the inflorescence, membranaceous, reddish, lepidote. Inflorescence subdigitately compound from a few simple branches or rarely simple, pyramidal, often much exceeded by the leaves; primary bracts like the upper scape-bracts, not more than half as long as the axillary spikes but their blades often exceeding the lower ones; spikes short-stipitate, divergent, lanceolate, acute, 25-30 mm long, complanate, 3-flowered or 4-flowered with 1 or 2 sterile bracts at the base; rhachis slightly flexuous, slender, angled, glabrous. Floral bracts erect, imbricate, elliptic, obtuse, 13-17(-24) mm long, about equaling the sepals, two to three times as long as the internodes, exposing the rhachis, carinate, chartaceous, nerved, soon glabrous, reddish; flowers subsessile. Sepals elliptic-oblong, obtuse, even, subglabrous, connate posteriorly for 5 mm; petals linear, 3 cm long, violet; stamens and pistil exserted. Capsule cylindric, acute, 28 mm long.
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Distribution
Epiphytic and saxicolous, 530-900 m alt, Cuba, Jamaica.
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