Vriesea racinae Click thumbnails for full size, scaled to a new window.
Vriesea racinae
Carolyn Bunnell, BSA Show 10/13. Photo Terry Davis.
Oscar Ribeiro
Ian Hook 09/21
Oscar Ribeiro
Vriesea racinae L. B. Smith, Lilloa (Contr. Gray Herb. 137) 6: 387, 413,pl. 3,figs. 5, 6. 1941.
Desc from S&D Plant flowering less than 3 dm high. Leaves numerous in a dense rosette, 10-11 cm long; Sheaths broadly elliptic, sometimes as long as the blade and always much wider, brown-punctulate, lepidote, deep castaneous near base, brown-spotted near apex; Blades ligulate, broadly acute and apiculate, 15-20 mm wide, flat and coiled-recurving, glabrous above, beneath obscurely punctulate-lepidote and coarsely and densely maroon-spotted. Scape erect, slender, glabrous; Scape-bracts erect, imbricate, closely enfolding the scape, elliptic, acute. Inflorescence simple, lax, 5-flowered in the type, glabrous; Rhachis nearly straight, ca 6 cm long. Floral bracts partly erect, partly secund with the flowers, broadly ovate, acute, to 18 mm long, equalling or slightly exceeding the internodes, convex, ecarinate, even; Flowers secund, spreading; pedicels slenderly obconic, 1 cm long. Sepals narrowly elliptic, 18 mm long, much exceeding the floral bracts, convex, ecarinate; Petals, stamens and pistil not known.
Type. M. B. & R. Foster 270 (holotype GH), epiphytic, Santa Teresa, 775 m alt, Espirito Santo, Brazil, 26 July 1939.
DISTRIBUTION. Known from the type collection only.
