Puyas are very interesting and decorative terrestrials for cool greenhouses, patios, or gardens. Because of their habitat at high elevations in the Andes surely some of them tolerate modest frost, and I believe that some species would be frost-hardy and winter-resistant also in temperate regions just as some of the opuntias are. It is most difficult to get enough plants to test this theory because travellers seldom collect living puyas with their terrible spines on the leaf margins. A better way is to collect fresh seeds which will germinate and grow very well.
Many of the Puya species, unfortunately, are not well known and illustrated. We can see, for instance, in the Flora Neotropica monograph number 14, part 1 many cases of drawings of a single flower, sepals, or part of a branch. Some species are known only from the type collection or from a few further collections, and because of their size the holdings in herbaria are very fragmentary.
During the examination of the Bromeliaceae of the Wroclaw Herbarium (WRSL) I was fortunate to find among the specimens some sheets with isotypes of puyas collected by A. Weberbauer in Peru and first described by Carl Mez. From these isotypes I have prepared drawings as detailed as possible to illustrate the following partially emended English descriptions. —SeeWeber 1986ep. 36(4): 172-173
