Tillandsia polystachia
A medium-sized epiphytic air plant with one of the widest ranges in the genus, from Mexico and the Caribbean to Bolivia and southern Brazil. It forms a rosette of green to slightly grey leaves and a branched inflorescence of flattened bracts with blue-violet flowers. It is mostly a plant of seasonally dry forest, so it wants bright light, strong air movement and a mount that dries quickly.
Where it grows wild
It grows as an epiphyte in tropical deciduous and semi-deciduous forest, dry forest with rocky outcrops, caatinga, campo rupestre and humid montane forest, and occasionally on rocks or in leaf litter. Field labels describe it on trees in pastures and in dry forest on granite outcrops.
Recorded from sea level to 2978 m, with a median of 545 m from 552 records. Most plants are in warm lowland and foothill forest.
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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.