Pico-V 2018 (Article) Puya

Distribution of Puya loca

Author(s):—A. Pico V.

Publication:—Journal of the Bromeliad Society 67(2): 72-82. (2018)

Abstract:—In Colombia the Bromeliaceae family is represented by 25 genera and 545 species, while the Puya genus is represented by 37 reported species (Betancur, 2017). Including the recently described Puya loca Madriñan (Madriñan, 2015), Colombia would have 38 species of the genus.
This species is endemic to Colombia and to date is known from just two locations, both in the department of Cundinamarca. The first population was registered in the municipality of La Calera (north-east of Bogotá), and the second by the Botanical Garden of Bogotá (JBB) in the Chipaque municipality, south-east of Bogotá (Madriñan 2015, Pico-V., 2015 and 2016, The International Plant Names Index [IPNI], 2016 and The Plant List, 2017). The JBB described the habitat of the second locality and recorded 75 percent germination with seeds stored ex situ for 14 months, in laboratory conditions at 2550 msnm in cold weather (Pico-V., 2015 and 2016). All herbarium specimens, flower collections preserved in ethanol (in Spanish: antoteca) and a seed collection (in Spanish: carpoteca) from the Chipaque population have been deposited in the herbarium of the JBB (Botanical Garden of Bogotá, 2017).