Tillandsia canescens Sw.

Tillandsia canescens Sw. Prodr. 57. 1788
Stemless, less than 20 cm. high ; leaves numerous in a narrowly crateriform rosette, up to 23 cm. long, densely and minutely appressed-lepidote throughout; sheaths ovate, 3-6 cm. long, brown; blades linear-triangular, acuminate, flat for most of their length, up to 1 cm. wide at the base; scape erect or ascending, slender; scape-bracts erect, imbricate, the lower foliaceous, the upper broadly ovate, their foliaceous blades elongate but shorter than the inflorescence, membranaceous, reddish, lepidote; inflorescence subdigitately compound from a few simple branches, pyramidal, often much exceeded by the leaves; primary bracts like the upper scapebracts, not more than half as long as the axillary spikes but their blades often exceeding the lower ones; spikes short-stipitate, divergent, lanceolate, acute, 25-30 mm. long, complanate, 3-flowered or 4-flowered with 1 or 2 sterile bracts at the base; rhachis slightly flexuous, slender, angled, glabrous; floral bracts erect, imbricate, elliptic, obtuse, 13-17 mm. long, about equaling the sepals, two to three times as long as the internodes, exposing the rhachis, chartaceous, nerved, soon glabrous, reddish; flowers subsessile; sepals elliptic-oblong, obtuse, even, subglabrous, connate posteriorly for 5 mm.; petals linear, 3 cm. long, violet; stamens and pistil exserted; capsule cylindric, acute, 28 mm. long.
Type locality: Jamaica.
DiSTRIBUTIO.v : Cuba, Jamaica; Trinidad.