Julie Batty 02/17 "very velvety leaves"

Gary May 03/17

Gary May ... "here are a couple of shots of my riohondoensis which is nowhere near flowering.
My capitata peach doesn't have pink leaves until flowering and the leaves are much shorter. The riohondoensis is a showy plant from the moment the leaves are about 8cm long."

Stan Olejnik 02/21 riohondoensis "large form"

in situ, Jeronimo

Bruce Dunstan 01/23 grown in full sun

Rob Bower 01/23 "Pink"

Rob Bower 01/23 "Red"

In this issue, Renate Ehlers finally publishes Tillandsia riohondoensis because in the many years since the first introduction nothing moved forward in identifying and classification of all these many plants called T. capitata. So she decided to go the first step and publish this outstanding plant. So from now on you can label your plants as T. riohondoensis.

Plant stem forming, flowering 20-80 cm high, rosette somewhat secund, 10-70 cm high, 15-40 cm in diameter.
Leaves up to 35 cm long, very thin leathery light green, both sides strongly lepidote and therefore appearing greenish grey, upright to somewhat recurved.
Sheaths 5-10 cm long, 3-4 cm wide, elliptic, slightly curved, the edges involute (bent inwards), the basal half light brown, densely fine lepidote.
Blades faintly distinct from the sheaths, 1.5-2.5 cm wide above the sheath, up to 25 cm long, triangular, rather flat, edges involute, tapering to a linear tip, apex recurved.
Peduncle fairly short, 3-6 cm long, 6-8 mm in diameter, curved upwards, densely covered by a few imbricate bracts, bracts foliate, red coloured at anthesis.
Inflorescence (fertile part) 4-8 cm long, 2-3 cm in diameter (without the primary bracts), capitate, panicle with side-branches of first order, 5-15 spikes, upright, very densely and polystichously arranged.
Primary bracts similar to peduncle bracts, up to 25 cm long, blades recurved, the upper ones with reduced blade, at anthesis bright carmine red, on both sides densely covered by coarse white trichomes, the sheaths completely enfolding and hiding the spikes.
Spikes sessile, 1.5-2 cm (up to 2.5 cm) long, 8-10 mm wide, narrowly elliptic, acuminate, complanate, usually with 2 flowers, at apex sometimes another stunted flower, but no flowerless bracts at the base.
Floral bracts 1.1-1.8 cm long, 6-10 mm wide, elliptical or delta shaped, weakly acute, 2-3 mm shorter than the sepals, strongly carinate, nerved, thin, membranous, pale green, glabrous.
Sepals 1.4-2.1 cm long, 6-8 mm wide, elliptical, acute, thin, membranous with hyaline edges, nerved, glabrous, all 3 (including the abaxial) keeled, sub-free, the adaxial pair fused 1 mm high.
Petals 5.5-6.5 cm long, 9-10 mm wide, dark purple, tapering to 4 mm at the base and becoming white, forming an upright tube, the rounded tips somewhat recurved.
Stamens protruding up to 1.5 cm from the flower.
Filaments 6.4-7 cm long, arranged in two whorls of unequal length, in the upper part oval in cross-section, 0.8 mm in diameter, violet, tapering to ribbon-like at the base and becoming white.
Anther 2.5-3 mm long, 0.8 mm wide,
attachment versatile 1/3 from the base, light brown or brown, pollen yolk-yellow.
Style 5.5-6.8 cm long, white, purple in the upper part.
Stigma 2 mm high, 1.2-2 mm wide, thin, white, with papillose spreading lobes (Type I according to Brown & Gilmartin).
Ovary 6-7 mm high, 2-2.2 mm wide at the base, elliptic, light green.

Distribution and habitat:
Tillandsia riohondoensis comes from Guatemala, near the Rio Hondo in the province of Zacapa, and is known, so far, only from this locality. The plant grows on rocks in a very hot area on very steep volcanic tuff near a waterfall.

Similar species
This new species differs from Tillandsia capitata Griseb. in the following characteristics:
Plant forming long stems, rosette secund.
Offsets not only appearing at the base, but also along the stem from the leaf axils.
Leaves lepidote, quite thin and very grey.
Peduncle quite short.
Spikes very dense, internodes very short. Spikes with two flowers each, at base no flowerless bracts.
The primary bracts are densely lepidote on both sides,
the blades are very long.
Flower bracts up to 3 mm shorter than the sepals, very small, strongly keeled, glabrous, membranous.
All three sepals keeled and subfree.

Etymology
This new species is named after the area where it was found, Rio Hondo in Guatemala.

Intro:
This plant has been on the market for a number of years and particularly in many American collections. It was sold by Guatemalan dealers as “Tillandsia sphaerocephala Guatemala". In German gardens and collections it also occurs under this or other fantasy names, but never, strangely, as T. capitata.
There are some offered as very small plants which come from offsets and were often cultivated by using flowering hormones. These plants seem often stemless or short stemmed. At the type locality or when mother plants are old, the plants are long stem-forming and much larger in diameter. The offsets appear, like in Tillandsia harrisii, willingly from the leaf axils along the entire length of the plant.
You can buy the plant as a common commercial plant, but, in nature near the Rio Hondo, it is extinct. In 1994 I received my plants from Uwe Feldhoff. Unfortunately, I was never able to see them in their natural habitat. When we were in Guatemala in 2010, I wanted to go with Uwe Feldhoff to Rio Hondo, but he reported that there were no more plants anymore.

Pertinent Emails
Subject RE: Tillandsia 'Rio Hondo'. From: "Harry Luther". To: "derek butcher"
Dear Derek; That Selby # is a hybrid from Guat., El Rancho area that is the Rio Honda aff capitata thing supposedly crossed with T. xerographica, very large and caulescent with conspicuous long red lateral branches. HEL

From : derek butcher. June 06, 2006. To: Harry Luther. Subject Tillandsia 'Rio Hondo'
Harry: Dennis tells me you have a similar plant under SEL92-0266. Does this originate with the Guatemalan mob? Are there links to 'Rio Hondo'?

This and other query from Ken Woods here in Australia prompted me to action.
Dennis Cathcart named ‘Maya’ in Cargo Report #7-3 for a supposed natural hybrid of xerographica x capitata occurring in Guatemala. Some followed this naming and others not, so we see its photo in ‘New Tillandsia Handbook’ by Shimizu & Takizawa, 1998 on page 113 as a formula. Just for interest sake, on the same page you will see a Dimmitt hybrid namely T. xerographica x brachycaulos. This was named ‘Betty’ by Paul Isley. We know that T. brachycaulos and T. capitata are very similar, in fact some collected plants seem to fall between the parameters of both species. It depends whether you are a lumper or a splitter! To my mind a hybrid with these as parents should show some sort of similarity but in this case they don’t. Here the man-made hybrid gives a hint of what the natural hybrid should look like. In this case it adds weight to my belief that the parentage xerographica x capitata was the wrong one to use!

Apparently this all started in 1989 when Uwe Feldhoff collected a plant at Zacapa, Rio Hondatal, Guatemala and sent a specimen to Renate Ehlers in Germany. Investigations showed that it was different to what is generally considered to be the range of the very variable T. capitata. Although T. rhodocephala, another variant within T. capitata in the broad sense, was published in 1994, no action has yet been taken with this particular taxon.

Guatemalan exporters meanwhile, had also been selling this plant around the world to the general nursery trade as Tillandsia sphaerocephala Guatemala. The true T. sphaerocephala from Bolivia was, at that time, not common in collections and which in any event had been confused with T. schreiteri in Smith & Downs, Flora Neotropica. Never had it been found in Guatemala and in any event the stamens are included so it was an odd identification. The plant was also distributed by the name of T. harrisii to which it does have some vague similarity when young and not in flower!

When I knew that Renate Ehlers was not immediately going to describe this taxon I decided to call it by the name of Tillandsia ‘Rio Hondo’ and it is recorded as such in the Bromeliad Cultivar Register with notes referring to ‘Uncle Derek says’.

In July 2001 Anwyl Bromeliads in New Zealand, imported a shipment from Tropimeyer (Guatemala) that included Tillandsia "sphaerocephala.". 40 or 50 plants flowered whilst in the quarantine house, and all were the same and were given the provisional name of 'Yellow Rose' because the coloration of the primary bracts was quite different from any other Tillandsia capitata photos in the records. So several hundred of these plants are being grown in NZ collections with the label Tillandsia capitata 'Yellow Rose'. This colour was unique and may have been the result of the obligatory gassing because subsequently, remaining plants flowered later in cultivation with that orange coloured primary bract typical of ‘Rio Hondo’. Indeed, offsets from what were called ‘Yellow Rose’ flowered similarly.

To summarise, we have a plant variously called, T. xerographica x capitata, T.‘Maya’, T. sphaerocephala Guatemala, T. harrisii, Tillandsia capitata ‘Yellow Rose’ in New Zealand, and T. ‘Rio Hondo’.
Because of the duplication problem with T. ‘Maya’ would you please change all labels to read T. ‘Rio Hondo’ or T. capitata ‘Rio Hondo’and I will note the Cultivar Register accordingly.

References
R Ehlers & P. Koide, 1994, J. Brom. Soc. 44:130
Hideo Shimizu and Hiroyuki Takizawa, 1998, New Tillandsia Handbook Japan Cactus Planning Co. Press
L.B. Smith and R.Downs, 1977, Flora Neotropica, Monograph 14, Tillandsioideae, Hafner Press