Tillandsia setacea
A small, clump-forming air plant with very fine, needle-like leaves that turn reddish in stronger light. It has a scattered range from Florida and Georgia through Mexico, the Greater Antilles and Guatemala to Pará in Brazil, and is common as an epiphyte on trees in Florida. Grow it mounted, in bright light with good air movement, and let it dry between waterings.
Where it grows wild
An epiphyte on the branches and trunks of trees, forming dense tufts. Most wild records come from peninsular Florida (Brevard, Polk, Highlands, Indian River, Okeechobee, Collier, Lee and Orange counties), where it grows in hammocks, swamp forest and on trees in fairly open woodland. The records we saw carry no host or habitat notes, so the exact microhabitat is described only in general terms here.
Florida sites are all near sea level; elsewhere in Mexico and the Caribbean it is also mainly a lowland plant. No elevation data were checked for the southern part of the range.
🔒 Growing it like that
The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:
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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 2.0 licence, unmodified.