Portea kermesina Click thumbnails for full size, scaled to a new window.
Portea kermesina
Species, Brazil.
Peter Sargent, Mossman. Photo Ken Woods.
Portea kermesina Brongniart ex K. Koch, Ind. Sem. Hort. Berol. for 1856(App.): 7. 1857; Ann. Sci. Nat. Bot. IV. 6: 368. 1857. Billbergia brongniarti Regel, Gartenflora 24: 166, pl. 829. 1875; Act. Hort. Petrop. 3(2): 283. 1875. Billbergia rubicunda K. Koch ex Baker, Handb. Bromel. 21. 1889; nomen.
Desc from S&D Leaves many in a densely funnelform rosette, 5-8 dm long, exceeding the inflores¬cence; sheaths large, broadly ovate, brown-lepidote; blades acute or rounded, apiculate, 5-6 cm wide, deeply channeled, green and often with dark purple-brown spots, laxly serrate with antrorse curved spines 4 mm long. Scape erect, stout, short, green, white-lepidote; scape-bracts imbricate, clasping, broadly elliptic with small spreading triangular blades, inflated, bright red. Inflorescence very dense at anthesis, then laxer with age, bipinnate, slenderly ellipsoid, 15-20 cm long, 4-7 cm in diameter; primary bracts erect, densely imbricate and covering the branches except for the apices of the flowers, broadly elliptic, rounded and apiculate, inflated, bright red; racemes short, 3-7-flowered; rhachis stout, minutely lepidote. Floral bracts suboblong, ample, mu¬cronulate, equaling the sepals; pedicels short, stout; flowers erect, to 65 mm long. Sepals more than half connate, 17 mm long without the 5 mm mucro; petals ligulate, subacute, 32 mm long, blue or purple toward apex, bearing 2 truncate scales at base; ovary subterete, nearly glabrous. Type. Reichenheim Hortus s n (holotype B ? n v), cultivated. Possible clonotypes, Paris Hortus in 1868 (P); Leiden Hortus 3640 (L). Distribution. Terrestrial in coastal forest, Bahia, Brazil.
BRAZIL. Without locality, 1826-29, Lesson in Voyage de !'Astrolabe (P). Bahia. Without locality, Blanchet 2997 (BM); Marau, 6 May 1966, Belem & Pinheiro 2077 (UB, US); 3 May 1968, Belem 3496 (IAN, NY, US).
