Aechmea tillandsioides (Mart. ex Schult. & Schult. fil.) Baker

Aechmea kienastii E. Morren; Mez, in DC
Monog. Phan. 9: 243. 1896.
Aechmea squarrosa Baker, ]ouT. Bot. 28: 305. 1890. Not A. squarrosa Baker. 1889.
Leaves several in a fasciculate rosette, very variable in proportions, 5-9 dm. long, minutely appressed-lepidote throughout; sheaths elliptic, 2-15 cm. long, often castaneous toward the base; blades linear, acuminate, not narrowed at the base, 10-65 mm. wide, densely armed with straight brown spines up to 3 mm. long; scape much shorter than the leaves, 1-5 mm. in diameter, sparsely white-fioccose, soon glabrous; scape-bracts remote, lanceolate, acuminate, subniembranaceous, densely and coarsely serrate, bright-red; inflorescence digitately compound or rarely simple, if pinnate, then with elongate spikes, fertile throughout, sparsely white-floccose when young; primary bracts like the scape-bracts, suberect to reflexed, longer or shorter than the axillary spikes; spikes suberect, oblong in outline, 4—1 1 cm. long, 15 mm. wide at anthesis, densely and distichously 6-30-flowered; rhachis straight, square, stout, wing-angled with the wings prolonged upon and adnate to the base of the floral bracts; floral bracts erect and imbricate at anthesis, spreading afterwards, broadly elliptic, acute, mucronulate, 10-17 mm. long, equaling the sepals at anthesis, navicular, ecarinate, entire, prominently nerved, chartaceous; flowers sessile; sepals asymmetric, elliptic, broadly obtuse, mucronulate, 7-10 mm. long, subfree; petals ligulate, acute, mucronulate, 13 mm. long, dark-purple with pale margin when dry, bearing 2 fimbriate scales high above the base; ovary much enlarged in fruit; berry ellipsoid, 7-10 mm. long.
Type locality: "Meaco, loco ignoto."
Distribution: Oaxaca, Tabasco, British Honduras, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama; also in Colombia.

Aechmea tillandsioides is a bromeliad widespread across southern Mexico, Central America, and northern South America (Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, Ecuador, northern Brazil). It is widely cultivated in other regions as an ornamental plant. This plant is cited in Flora Brasiliensis by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius.