Vriesea carinata
A small, soft-leaved tank bromeliad endemic to Brazil's Atlantic Forest, grown for its flat, keeled inflorescence of red bracts tipped yellow or green. In the wild it is a common epiphyte of shaded to semi-shaded forest interiors from Bahia to Rio Grande do Sul, from sea level to about 1500 m, and it has given rise to more than 20 registered cultivars. It likes more shade, more humidity and cooler winters than most bromeliads sold as houseplants.
Where it grows wild
An epiphyte, usually 2–3 m up on trunks and branches, in the interior of dense evergreen Atlantic rainforest (Floresta Ombrófila Densa), often in groups. Labels describe it as shade-loving to semi-shade-loving, in well-developed forest, gallery forest and the closed forest of coastal islands; it also occurs in restinga, in mixed Araucaria forest, and occasionally on rocks at Pedra Azul in EspÃrito Santo.
Measured records run from sea level to 1551 m, median 460 m (376 records). Many coastal collections in Paraná and São Paulo are below 400 m; the highest are in the EspÃrito Santo mountains at 1385–1470 m.
🔒 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 carinata? 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.