Vriesea bituminosa
A large tank bromeliad, up to about a metre tall in flower, from the mountains of south-eastern Brazil with a few outlying records in the coastal cordillera of Venezuela. It grows both as an epiphyte in montane and cloud forest and on rock in sunny campo rupestre, and its inflorescence is coated in a sticky, tar-like substance that gives the species its name. Grow it as a cool-to-intermediate, bright-light Vriesea with a clear night drop.
Where it grows wild
Herbarium labels describe it as an epiphyte in montane forest and cloud forest (often a few metres up the trunk), a facultative epiphyte in shaded riverside forest, and a sun-loving rock plant in campo rupestre, sometimes perched on giant Vellozia. It is therefore adaptable, from partial shade to fairly strong sun.
Specimens with an altitude are from about 840 to 1,250 m in Brazil and 1,620 m in Venezuela; it is essentially a plant of the mountains.
🔒 Growing it like that
The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:
Grow Vriesea bituminosa? Add it to a free garden and its full profile opens. Pro opens all 38,374 profiles in the library, plants and fungi.
More Vriesea
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.