Tillandsia usneoides

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.

Flowering summer. Epiphytic, occasionally on fences, telephone lines; 0--300 m; Ala., Ark., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.C., S.C., Tex., Va.; Mexico; West Indies; Central America; South America.

Plants rootless, pendent from trees, consisting of slender, wiry, branching stems to 5 m, bearing numerous scattered, densely cinereous-lepidote, filiform lvs 2-5 cm; infl reduced to a single subsessile fl terminating very short axillary branches; sep narrowly ovate, to 7 mm; pet narrow, recurved, green fading yellowish, 1 cm; fr cylindric, 2.5 cm; 2n=32. Trop. Amer., n. on the coastal plain to Va. and historically to s. Md.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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