Tillandsia standleyi L.B.Sm.
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- Tillandsia standleyi by Julian Steyermark & Albert E Vatter, Jr. in Brom Soc Bull 6:6. 1956
One of the most unusual species of the large genus, Tillandsia, is T. Standleyi. This was first described in 1931 by Dr. Lyman B. Smith (Contr. Gray Herb. 95: 48), and was based upon a specimen collected by Paul C. Standley from El Achote, near Siguatepeque, Honduras, on February 18, 1928. Mr. Standley found the plant growing as an epiphyte on an oak tree at an elevation of 1,500 meters.
This species may be easily distinguished at once from all other members of the genus by the meter long, gracefully pendent inflorescence bearing long, prominent, primary bracts. Dr. Smith states (loc. cit. p. 47) "Unlike any other species of Tillandsia known to the writer, T. Standleyi has a peculiar growth at the base of each spike on the side toward the axis of the inflorescence (Pl. IX, figs. 1-2). Various facts would indicate that this growth functions as an aid to spreading the spikes at maturity. The deep groove left in the basal floral bract which is next the axis (PI. IX, fig. 4 ) and the total absence of any groove in the one on the opposite side indicate that before maturity the spikes were erect and very closely appressed to the axis. The extremely shrunken condition of the growth indicates that it was formerly very turgid, and this with its spreading position evidently made it well adapted to pushing the spike away from the axis of the inflorescence. It is not possible to ascertain the morphological nature of this growth with any certainty until fresh material is obtainable."
Tillandsia Standleyi was known only. from the original Honduran collection until it was later discovered in Guatemala where Mr. Standley and the present authors found it on respective expeditions made to that country sponsored by the Chicago Natural History Museum to collect material for the Flora of Guatemala. Here it is found in the mountains in two eastern departments of that republic: Zacapa and Alta Verapaz. In the department of Alta Verapaz it occurs as an epiphyte on trees in a large swamp near Tactic at an altitude of 1,450 meters, associated with such other bromeliads as Catopsis Hahnii Baker and Tillandsia Ghiesbreghtii Baker. This region lies in a zone of wet, diversified forest. In the department of Zacapa Tillandsia Standleyi is found in mixed oak-pine forests of the Sierra de las Minas at elevations ranging from 1,450 to 1,500 meters. These forests are situated in the zone of clouds where the climate remains fairly cool and moist with rather uniform temperatures averaging 60-65° F. throughout the year. There in these oak-pine cloud forests T.. Standleyi is found as an epiphyte along mountain slopes associated with another Tillandsia, T. lampropoda L. B. Smith. Some of the small trees and shrubs of this forest consist of Styrax argenteus Presl, Vaccinium poasanum D. Sm., Befaria mexicana Benth., Ilex quercetorum I. M. Johnston, and Gaultheria odorata Willd.
Tillandsia Standleyi is a striking plant when seen growing. The drooping spray of flowers thus appears to dangle in the air from the lower part of a tree, like some plant from a hanging garden. The long curving inflorescence with its prominent bright red bracts placed almost horizontally at right angles to the vertically descending elongated axis of the inflorescence arises from the center of a leaf rosette. The .peduncle is scarlet. The bracts of the peduncle have a deep red color and become dull purplish on the outside near the tip. The violet petals, measuring 5 cm. long, white filaments, and yellow anthers add a striking contrast against the red peduncles and primary bracts. The erect to ascending leaves are rather stiff and are dull green on both sides with purple-brown near the base.
In addition to the original locality where Standley discovered the species in Honduras, it has, in recent years, been collected in Honduras from cloud forests on Cerro de Uyuca in the department of Morazan and from the Montana de Yuscaran in the department of El Paraiso at elevations ranging from 1,300 to 1,800 meters.
Living plants of T. Standleyi were brought back from Guatemala by the senior author to the United States in 1942, where they were grown at the Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago. These plants never flowered and subsequently died, so that, so far as known, no living plants of this species are extant in this country. It is to be hoped that such a showy ornamental plant may eventually find its place in homes and conservatories along with other beautiful bromeliads.
THE HOME OF TILLANDSIA STANDLEYI by Clarence Kl. Horich in Brom. Soc. Bull. 7: 67. 1957
Dr. J. A. Steyermark's detailed and very descriptive article on Tillandsia Standleyi, published in The Bromeliad Bulletin, (Vol. VI, No. 1, 1956) became a most welcome source of valuable information when I was traveling the highlands of Honduras in September 1956, thus enabling me to devote some days to collecting bromeliads as a sideline while otherwise completing orders for orchids.
One of the native haunts of Tillandsia Standleyi, as cited by Dr. Steyermark, immediately borders one area which I had crossmarked on the map for its orchids during earlier visits. It was a "must" on my schedule due to the occurance of the desirable cloud forest orchid Arpophyllum alpinum in this area, the Cerro Uyuca in the Dept. of Francisco Morazan. Some observations here may serve as an addition to Dr. Steyermark's explanations.
One fact which I found of particular interest is the pointed limitation of distribution our species is subjected to. Tillandsia Standleyi is a true cloud forest resident, never descending from its cold, wet and windy heights; and in this we may be able to gather several peculiar facts.
The term cloud forest is basically too generalized, for it applies to at least two distinctly different zones; these we should try to define at once.
Touched only by rain-carrying, low and heavy clouds, the first "separation" describes
a relatively cool and moist region just below the main drift of the water-carrying air masses which rarely ever dries out completely even during sunny time intervals. Yet it does receive sufficient dry spells between the rain repetitions to enable the representatives of its vegetation to let the water evaporate from the surface of the foliage, whereas the roots, and in the case of bromeliads, the interior of the plants, remain water soaked nearly all the time. Bromels of this zone, located in Honduras at about 1400 m. altitude, are for instance Tillandsia lampropoda, T. punctulata, and T. fasciculuta var. rotundata which we have treated in the July-August, 1957, Bulletin.
In contrast to this belt, the second zone is, generally speaking, continuously subjected to the direct impact of clouds, which at a certain height with colder temperatures, no longer drift uphill without touching the ground. The aerial humidity in this zone is at once doubled that of the area just a few feet below, but which is not enveiled by the mists.
As a result we notice an unbelievably blunt change of vegetation . . . and this flora is as specialized to cope with the excessively wet conditions of its environment as a cactus is to its waterless desert home.The plants of the upper cloud zone are forever stark wet with no chance to rid themselves of the water surplus condensing on their foliage. Somehow they have become "amphibious" in their very environments and demands. This forest, composed of dicotyledonous rather than coniferous trees, is veritably a green sponge. It is slippery wet, dark, cold and almost deserted by animal and insect life. An occasional finger-long centipede or scorpion darts out of its home in a bromeliad or from under a rotted tree carcass. It is the cathedral home of a million ferns, mosses and lichens, of glistening orchids and trailing aroids, of a million dripping leaves and a million bromeliads. These are what I once called the "green buckets", soft leaved and bulky, for there is no danger of their ever drying up, being filled with water enough to break any dead branch they have settled on. The plants of this region usually have a wide-celled epidermis in order to allow the moisture to enter and retreat from the live substance of their leaves rapidly and without harm to the plant itself.
Catopsis thrive here, but few of these delicate bromels ever survive U. S. fumigation, perishing both from this and the drying procedures they may become subjected to.
Tillandsia Standleyi, however, is a noteworthy, well-traveling exception as I learned from M. B. Foster to whom I sent some specimens; but in. every other respect it is as soft leaved a cloud forest creature as any. It grows by the very thousands on the trees of its home, covering them so perfectly that their trunks literally vanish under a live coat. These trees at the lower fringe of the directly cloud-influenced zone consist of pines on both Cerro Uyuca and the slightly lower Cerro Montanita nearby.
As usual the very uppermost mountain peaks in Honduras carry a cap of almost pure dicotyledonous forest with still more cold resisting species. Thus, the Cerro Uyuca is topped by deciduous trees, whilst the crest of the Cerro Montanita is still predominantly settled by pines, which for a perch T. Standleyi seems to be particularly fond of ... as long as these pines only remain in the second, upper cloud zone.
We first meet T. Standleyi on pines at Km. 17-18 along the Tegucigalpa-Zamorano road, and then, again on pines right above the Tatumbla-Zamorano road junction at about Km. 24.3 along this route which describes the very lowest fringe of the upper cloud zone and simultaneously, its lower limit of distribution here. As already stated the change of vegetation between the two adjoining zones is as blunt as could be. Three hundred feet below the cloud fringe not a single plant of T. Standleyi can be encountered; entering the upper zone, however, this bromel at once appears by the very thousands!
The local abundance of this fine, but regionally restricted and basically rare Tillandsia in these isolated high sections, should not induce us to assume that it is a common species, to be had "in a jiffy". The cloud forests of its home being mercilessly diminished by the wild, reckless and unsystematic timbering, it is at this time, nearing the verge of extinction in the surrounding area. Being too specialized, and therefore unable to "escape" by descending into the zone below the steady drift of the clouds, it will vanish at precisely the same moment that the last tree of its mountain hideout has been hauled away. Tillandsia Standleyi, too perfectly matched for its home to readjust itself to changed environments, will be one of the first to become extinct, even if at this moment it is still thriving by the hundreds of thousands in its mountain retreats. —See Smith & Downs 1977
