Hohenbergia laesslei L.B.Sm.[as Hohenbergia laesslei L. B. Smith]

Diagnose: —H. inerme Mez atque H. fawcettii Mez affinis, a priore bracteis florigeris sublaevibus atro-pictis, a posteriore pedunculis inferioribus elongatis, a ambobus spicis persistente albido-lepidotis, spinis sepalorum majoribus differt.

Observations: —A NEW HOHENBERGIA FROM JAMAICA by Lyman B. Smith in Bromel. Soc. Bull. 6: 52, fig. 1956
The outstanding bromeliad specialty of Jamaica is the genus Hohenbergia, so I was not greatly surprised when another new species appeared in a collection sent me by George R. Proctor of the Science Museum of the Institute of Jamaica. I take pleasure in naming the species after its discoverer Mr. Albert M. Laessle.
The species is closely related to Hohenbergia inermis Mez and H. fawcettii Mez but differs from the first in its smoothish dark-spotted floral bracts and from the second in its elongate lower peduncles. Unlike either it has persistently white-lepidote spikes and the spines on its sepals are larger. The following Latin version of the above notes makes the species strictly legal: HOHENBERGIA LAESSLEI L. B. Smith, sp. nov.
Epiphytic; flowering shoot decurved, 1 m. long; leaves 7 dm. long, densely punctulate-lepidote throughout, sheaths elliptic-oblong, 25 cm. long, pale brown, blades ligulate, 12 cm. wide, laxly serrate with dark spreading teeth 2 mm. long; scape stout; scape-bracts erect, densely imbricate, lanceolate, acuminate to a dark indurate apex, membranaceous; inflorescence bipinnate, slenderly pyramidal, 4 dm. long, finely white-lepidote; primary bracts like the scape-bracts, exceeding the lower spikes; peduncles spreading, slender, complanate, to 5 cm. long; spikes subcylindric to ellipsoid, 35 mm. long, 10 mm. in diameter; floral bracts broadly ovate with a mucro 2 mm. long, nerved at least near the margin, yellow with a dark castaneous median spot, slightly shorter than the sepals after anthesis, the lower broadly acute, the upper rounded; sepals 5 mm. long exclusive of the 1 mm. mucro; petals appendaged; ovary subglobose, placentae subapical, ovules obtuse.
Type in the Science Museum of The Institute of Jamaica, collected near Sweetwater, Cockpit Country, St. James Parish, Jamaica, altitude 570 m., August 16. 1952. bv Albert M. Laessle.

Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. (protologue) Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.