Species library › Tillandsia › Tillandsia brachyphylla
Other Partly documented

Tillandsia brachyphylla

A small, silvery, short-leaved Tillandsia endemic to Brazil, known mainly from the granite domes and peaks around Rio de Janeiro, with a few records from the mountains of Bahia. Herbarium labels repeatedly call it rock-dwelling and sun-loving, so it is best treated as a bright, airy lithophyte rather than a shaded forest epiphyte.

Tillandsia brachyphylla
Photo: Timm Stolten, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
At home, aim for
Day IntermediateTargets in Plantistry
Night Close to the dayTargets in Plantistry
Humidity Ordinary room humidityBand in Plantistry
Light Full sunDLI and PPFD in Plantistry
No rest periodGrows on rock (lithophyte)

Where it grows wild

Herbarium collections describe it as saxicolous and heliophilic: rooted on bare granite on Pedra da Gávea and the south face of Pão de Açúcar, on conglomerate rock with stony grassland at Pico das Almas in Bahia, and once from humid forest near Macaé. The rock faces sit inside the Atlantic Forest zone, so the air is humid and misty even though the plant itself is exposed.

Specimen labels give about 200 to 1,100 m, most from 200 to 850 m on Rio's coastal granite massifs.

Brazil (Rio de Janeiro)Brazil (Bahia)

🔒 Growing it like that

The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:

✓ Day and night temperature targets, and the limits it tolerates
✓ Humidity band, and how to hold it
✓ Light as DLI and PPFD for a grow light
✓ Wet and dry seasons, and whether to rest it
✓ Substrate and airflow
✓ A step-by-step setup to grow it like the wild

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Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, used under its CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, unmodified.