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Billbergia velascana Cárdenas  diagnose
; 0 handsome plant, 60 cm tall. leaf-blade ligulate broadly acute 60 cm long, 20–50 mm wide, covered on both sides with cinereous scales, densely serrate with horizontally or upwardly directed, 2 mm long, light brown teeth, gray-green with handsome transverse white bands, outwardly curved. inflorescence: peduncle about 40 cm long, 8 mm thick densely white flocculose; peduncle bracts lanceolate 16–19 long, rose; fertile part simple regularly many-flowered with a white flocculose axis; flower¬ bracts ovate acute, 8 mm long, membranaceous, flocculose pink-magenta. flowers: sepals ovate acute 12 mm long, green below, violet above with a pink border, nerved, glabrous, flocculose; petals linear-lanceolate, broadly acute spirally recurved 5 cm long, cobalt blue, bearing 2 white, 2-toothed short scales at their base. stamens 5 cm long, light blue lilac. stamens: anther filiform, 2 cm long, undulate. pistil: style 5 cm long, dark blue longitudinally 3-striate; stigma trifid, violet, 5 cm long; ovary ovate to conic, strongly trigonous, 12 mm long, sul¬cate, white-flocculose; epigynous tube 12 mm long;.

Edited from : Brom Soc Bull 7(3): 35-6.. (1957)