Puya venezuelana 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

    Puya venezuelana L.B.Sm.

  • Type

    TYPE. Aristeguieta 3538 (holotype, US), on rocks, Páramo de Guirigay, 3200 m alt, Trujillo, Venezuela, Aug 1958.

  • Description

    Description - Plant flowering nearly 6 dm high. Leaves rosulate, 25 cm long; sheaths suborbicular, 3 cm long, glabrous, serrulate toward apex; blades 12 mm wide, glabrous above, covered beneath with appressed cinereous scales, laxly serrate with spreading antrorse and retrorse brown spines 4 mm long. Scape erect, slender, densely pale-flocculose; scape-bracts erect, densely imbricate, membranaceous, brown when dry, the lowest serrulate and with small foliaceous blades, the highest entire, bladeless, acute. Inflorescence nutant, simple, strobilate, cylindric, 18 cm long, ca. 2 cm in diameter, sparsely brown-flocculose. Floral bracts like the upper scape-bracts, 45 mm long, straight, exceeding the sepals; pedicels slenderly obconic, 7 mm long. Sepals narrowly lanceolate, subacute, 18 mm long, thin; petals over 3 cm long, naked, blue, contorted after anthesis; stamens included; ovary almost wholly superior; ovules alate.

  • Distribution

    Known from the type collection only.

    Venezuela South America| Trujillo Venezuela South America|