Tillandsia vernicosa
A stiff, silvery-green atmospheric Tillandsia from the seasonally dry Chaco and the Andean foothill forests of Bolivia, Paraguay and northern Argentina, where it grows on trees in hot summers and dry, cool winters. Specimen notes describe red bracts or calyx, white petals and light green to reddish leaves. It is a tough plant for bright light and strong airflow, and it responds well to a drier winter.
Where it grows wild
Collection labels place it in Chaco forest, both well-drained and poorly drained, including algarrobo and quebracho woodland, riverside and inundated-savanna forest in the Paraguayan Chaco, semideciduous Andean valley forest with Anadenanthera colubrina, and xerophytic forest with Prosopis and Schinopsis on sandy soil over sandstone. There are also records from caatinga in Bahia, Brazil. It grows on tree branches in the open, well-lit crowns of these dry forests.
Recorded from about 100 m in the Chaco plains to about 1,900 m in Bolivian inter-Andean valleys; the median record is near 670 m.
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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.