Aechmea araneosa
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Aechmea araneosa
Species

Ken Woods.

Richard Harper.

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Aechmea araneosa L. B. Smith, Arq. Bot. S. Paulo II. 1: 53, pI. 64. 1941.
Desc from S&D
Plant flowering nearly 1 m high.
Leaves many, rosulate, to 8 dm long;
Sheaths elliptic, 17 cm long, densely and finely brown-lepidote;
Blades linear, acute, pungent, 2 cm wide, flat, wholly green, glabrous above, obscurely punctulate-lepidote beneath, densely serrate toward base with curved brown spines 2 mm long, laxly elsewhere.
Scape erect, stout, white-lanate;
Scape-bracts erect, imbricate, elliptic, ample, acute, entire, membranaceous, bright red, white-lepidote.
Inflorescence amply tripinnate, paniculate, sub cylindric, 3 dm in diameter, white-lanate throughout;
Primary bracts like the scape-bracts, gradually smaller toward the apex of the inflorescence, much .shorter than the axillary branches;
Branches spreading;
Spikes short, bearing a few distichous flowers.
Floral bracts suborbicular, to 10 mm long including the acuminate pungent 3 mm apex, exceeding the ovary, broadly convex, ecarinate, membranaceous, nerved, brown;
Flowers sessile, divergent.
Sepals free, subsymmetric, ovate, acuminate, not pungent, 11 mm long;
Petals 13 mm long, orange, bearing 2 obtuse scales at base, the blades narrowly elliptic, acute;
Stamens included; epigynous tube short; placentae apical.
Type. Foster 241 (holotype, GH; isotype R), Santa Teresa, Espirito Santo, Brazil, 25 Jul 1939.
Distribution. Known from the type locality only and from one other specimen: 7 Aug 1940, Foster 836 (GH, US).

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Updated 15/05/21

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