ADDISONIA 77 
(Plate 39) 
TILLANDSIA SUBLAXA 
Slender-spiked Tillandsia 
Native of the West Indies 
Family BROMELIACEAE PINEAPPLE Family 
Tillandsia sublaxa Baker, Jour. Bot. 25: 280. 1887. 
A stemless epiphytic herbaceous plant with relatively few narrow 
leaves in a utriculate rosette. The narrowly lanceolate reflexed 
leaves with long attenuate tips are relatively few, moderately firm 
in texture, four to seven inches or more in length, and taper from a 
broadened base; they are clothed with grayish scales which give the 
plant a silvery hue. The unbranched flowering stem is erect and 
four to seven inches or sometimes more in length. The flowers, 
which exceed the oblong-lanceolate bracts, are about six or eight on 
each side of the stem. ‘The three oblong or oblong-lanceolate 
sepals are rather rigid and about half as long as the corolla. ‘The 
three petals are lilac. The stamens and pistil are exserted. The 
seeds are narrow and erect. ‘The oblong capsule is about one inch 
long. ‘The linear seeds are produced at the base into a long- 
stalked appendage with silky threads resembling pappus. 
The plant which furnished the accompanying illustration was col- 
lected by George V. Nash in the vicinity of Mt. Maleuvre, Haiti, 
on July 24, 1905, and flowered in the conservatories of the New 
York Botanical Garden on February 5, 1907. 
Tillandsia sublaxa was described from specimens secured by 
William Purdie on logwood trees in the plains of Westmoreland, 
Jamaica. It is also rather common in parts of Porto Rico. Like 
most of the other members of the genus it prefers to grow on trees 
and is commonly referred to as an air-plant. In cultivation, most 
species of Tillandsia delight in a warm, moist temperature, and 
should be placed in houses where they will get plenty of sunlight 
and syringing during the growing season, which is during the late 
spring or summer months. Many of the species may be grown to 
best advantage in a fibrous loam with rotted manure added; others 
thrive best in a mixture of loam, peat and leaf-mould, while a few 
kinds prefer to be fastened to blocks of peat or cork or branches of 
trees and suspended on wires from the roof of the conservatory. 
There are three hundred or more described species of Tillandsia, 
most of them epiphytes and all natives of America. Compara- 
