Tillandsia leucolepis
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Tillandsia leucolepis
| M.Romanowski, FCBS |
Peter Tristram 02/18 |
Peter Tristram ..."This plant doesn’t often bloom and adventitiously pups few and slowly. Maybe a 25 year old specimen."
Tillandsia leucolepis L. B. Smith, Phytologia 8: 497, pI. 1, fig. 1-3. 1963.
Desc from S&D p957-9
Plant stemless, about 1.5 m high.
Leaves many in a spreading rosette, 6-8 dm long, covered with cinereous appressed scales;
Sheaths elliptic, 25 cm long, purple-black;
Blades recurving, narrowly triangular, attenuate, 7 cm wide at base, flat.
Scape ascending;
Scape-bracts imbricate but with recurving foliaceous blades.
Inflorescence subtripinnate with the lowest branches divided;
Primary bracts ovate, red, about equaling or exceeding the bracteate sterile bases of the branches, the lower foliaceous-laminate, the upper attenuate;
Secondary bracts scarcely larger than the floral bracts;
Spikes oblong, strongly complanate, to 13 cm long exclusive of the bracteate sterile base, 3 cm wide, subdensely 13-flowered;
Rhachis flexuous, alate, largely exposed.
Floral bracts imbricate, elliptic, acute, 34 mm long, ecarinate, covered with white appressed scales;
Pedicels short.
Sepals free, lance-oblong, acute, 33 mm long, exserted, glabrous, the posterior carinate;
Petals linear, 5 cm long, naked;
Stamens exserted.
Type, MacDougall 280 (holotype US), cultivated, probably of local origin, Oaxaca, Mexico, 15 Mar 1962.
DISTRIBUTION. Known from the type collection only.
Updated 23/10/25