Many years ago I acquired my first specimen of this fine Tillandsia from Fred Fuchs, famed orchid collector and explorer, and never dreamed that I would ever see it growing wild. Years later our explorations took us to the arid scrub forests of western Ecuador and northern Peru where this plant was abundant, often in the crowns of towering Bombax trees.

A beautiful species with rather thin, very dark gray, stiff, almost brittle leaves in a symmetrical open rosette that can reach 18 inches across.

The inflorescence, a tall spike with a cluster of short branches, develops slowly, becoming vivid lacquer red and lasting in color for months.

A fairly new species from Sierra de Niltepec, Zanatepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. A smallish grower 6 to 8 inches tall is a lithophyte or cliff dwelling species in nature. The leaves are stiff in an upright to slightly spreading rosette, silvery-gray and tapering to a point. The inflorescence is short to about 1.5 times the length of the leaves, well branched and light green with white flowers. Rare in collections.

A unique species from Cuba where it lives on exposed limestone cliffs near Santiago de Cuba at about 1,000 feet of altitude. Related to capitata, it forms a somewhat bulbous base with stiff, glabrous leaves in a flaring, upright rosette with the leaves recurving sharply in a coil when grown bright or hard. The color varies with light and stage of growth but is green with a slight gray bloom when young and becomes yellowish with maturity, blushing pink in strong light.

At anthesis the inflorescence produces long scape bracts of yellow, ending in pink. The branches are mostly green and the tubular flowers purple-blue. Easy to grow mounted but slow growing and very cold tender.