Tillandsia didistichoides Mez

Tillandsia didistichoides Mez, in DC. Monog Phan. 9:778. 1896.
Stemless, 2-4 dm. high; leaves many in a dense globular rosette, 15-35 cm. long, densely and finely appressed-lepidote; sheaths broadly ovate to suborbicular, not strongly inflated nor closely investing the base of the scape, 4-8 cm. long, dark-castaneous; blades linear-triangular, acuminate, 1-2 cm. wide at the base, involute-subulate, cinereous-lepidote; scape usually decurved, slender; scape-bracts erect, imbricate, broadly ovate, at least the lower ones with elongate linear blades, inflated and loosely enfolding the scape, chartaceous, prominently nerved, appressed-lepidote, bright-red, drying to brown; inflorescence subpinnatcly compound with simple branches, 10-23 cm. long; primary bracts like the scape-bracts but usually bladeless and merely apiculate, erect, imbricate and wholly concealing the slender axis and the lower part of the sterile bases of the axillary spikes; spikes with the lower part of the sterile ba,se erect and closely appressed to the axis of the inflorescence, then sharply bent outward and spreading, the sterile base narrower than the fertile part and covered with reduced imbricate bracts, the fertile part lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, acute, complanate, 4—5 cm. long, 10-15 mm. wide, 8-12-flowered; rhachis straight, slender, angled, glabrous; floral bracts erect, imbricate, elliptic, acute, 15 mm. long, exceeding the sepals, three times as long as the internodes and concealing the rhachis, chartaceous, prominently nerved, obscurely lepidote, bright-red; flowers erect; sepals elliptic, acute, 10-12 nun. long, prominently nerved, glabrous, free; petals oblong, acute, 2 cm. long, entire, naked, lilac; stamens included, filaments straight; capsule slenderly cylindric, acute, 15 mm. long.
Type locality: Trinidad.
DisTRrBUTiON: Eastern Cuba and Haiti; Guadeloupe; also in Trinidad and Venezuela.

Tillandsia didistichoides, synonym Vriesea didistichoides, is a species of flowering plant in the family Bromeliaceae, native to the Caribbean, south-east Mexico to Honduras, Colombia and Venezuela. It was first described by Carl Christian Mez in 1896.