Hechtia elliptica L.B.Sm.

  • Authority

    Smith, Lyman B. & Downs, Robert J. 1974. Pitcairnioideae (Bromeliaceae). Fl. Neotrop. Monogr. 14 (1): 1-658. (Published by NYBG Press)

  • Family

    Bromeliaceae

  • Scientific Name

    Hechtia elliptica L.B.Sm.

  • Type

    TYPE. Palmer 205 in series of 1898 (holotype, GH; isotype, UC), Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico, 1898.

  • Description

    Description - Only the staminate plant known, to 5 dm high. Leaves 27 cm long; sheaths broadly ovate, 25 mm long, flavous or castaneous, serrulate, glabrous; blades narrowly triangular, pungent, 1-2 cm wide, splashed with bright-rose, densely appressed-white-lepidote but soon becoming glabrous above, the teeth distant, 4 mm long, straight or uncinate, dark-castaneous. Scape slender, strongly compressed, soon glabrous; scape-bracts small, ovate, acute, thin, the upper remote. Inflorescence laxly bipinnate, 2 dm long, pale-lepidote; primary bracts like the scape-bracts, much shorter than the axillary spikes; spikes suberect, dense or subdense, 2-5 cm long, 1 cm in diameter. Floral bracts suborbicular, apiculate, nearly equaling the sepals, very thin, rose with a broad hyaline margin, erose; flowers suberect, subsessile. Sepals elliptic, obtuse, 5 mm long, 3-nerved, broadly hyaline-margined; petals elliptic, obtuse, 8 mm long, pale-lepidote outside, connate for 3 mm; stamens included.

  • Distribution

    Exposed limestone hillsides, Coahuila, Mexico.

    Mexico North America| Coahuila Mexico North America|