Spanish Moss

Plants pendent in long festoons, flowering to 300 cm. Stems elongate. Leaves 4--8, 2-ranked, often twisted or contorted, gray to silver-gray, 1.5--3 ´ 0.1--0.2 cm, densely grayish-scaly; sheath pale, narrowly elliptic, not inflated, not forming pseudobulb, 0.2--0.4 cm wide; blade filiform, succulent, margins involute to nearly tubular, apex acute. Inflorescences: scape concealed within leaf sheath, appearing scapeless, pendent with shoot, ± 1 mm diam. Floral bracts enveloping flower, erect, green, broad (covering all or most of rachis, rachis not visible at anthesis), ovate, not keeled, 0.4--0.5 cm, thin-leathery, apex acute, surfaces densely grayish-scaly, venation even to slight. Flowers 1, inconspicuous, apparently sessile; sepals free, ovate, not keeled, 0.6--0.7 cm, thin, veined, apex acute, surfaces glabrous; corolla spreading, petals spreading, yellow-green, elliptic, to 1 cm; stamens included; stigma included, simple-erect. Fruits to 2.5 cm.

Ala., Ark., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tex., Va.; Mexico; West Indies; Central America; South America.

Flowering summer.

Epiphytic, occasionally on fences, telephone lines; 0--300m.

Renealmia usneoides Linnaeus, Sp. Pl. 1: 287. 1753; Dendropogon usneoides (Linnaeus) Rafinesque