This spectacular variety has been in limited cultivation since the early 1960's and has been misidentified first as Guzmania eduardii Andre ex Mez and later as G. sanguinea var. erecta Andre. The latter is very doubtfully a variety of G. sanguinea and may be conspecific with G. fusispica Mez & Sodiro; regardless, the type and the only illustration are so poor that a positive identification is impossible.
Guzmania sanguinea var. comosa by H E Luther in J Brom Soc 39: 197. 1989
Some bromeliads enjoy a lengthy period in cultivation before they are properly identified or described. Occasionally, species named from horticultural material have never been re-collected in the wild (e.g. Puya hortensis L.B. Smith, Billbergia buchholtzii Mez, and Wittrockia amazonica [Baker] L.B. Smith). The odd but attractive guzmania shown in figure 2 has been in and out of horticulture for nearly 30 years.
The first record of this taxon in cultivation appeared as a short article in the equally short-lived publication Bromeliad Papers published by Alex D. Hawkes in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Unfortunately it was misidentified. This first notice is reprinted in full (following a tradition set forth by its author) from volume 2, number 3, July 1960.
Guzmania eduardii. At the regular meeting of the Bromeliad Society of South Florida for July, the president of the organization, Nat DeLeon, brought an extremely unusual bromeliad for the exhibition table. A plant collected by him in Colombia, it has provisionally been determined as Guzmania eduardiii Andre ex Mez. According to Smith's Bromeliaceae of Colombia (1957), this species has been gathered on several occasions in that country . Mr. DeLeon's specimen was a very pretty thing with broad foliage and a sunken cluster of proportionately large flowers with white petals. But the extraordinary thing about this plant was the "featherduster"-like structure sticking up out of the middle of the inflorescence, to a height of several inches. With a vivid scarlet stalk, its apical portion was set with a series of largish scarlet bracts, the purpose of which we were unable to fathom! Careful examination of this odd structure did not disclose any evidence of abortive flowers at the bases of these "aerial" bracts, as might have been expected. No mention of this condition is made in Dr. Smith's description of G. eduardii, and we know of no comparable structure elsewhere in Bromeliaceae.
This misidentification probably had its origin with a specimen at the Smithsonian Institution collected in Colombia in 1944 that was first determined as Guzmania eduardii Andre "aberrant." By the end of 1950, the identification had been changed to G. sanguinea (Andre) Andre ex Mez. As the specimen is rather incomplete there was certainly cause for confusion.
Apparently the DeLeon plant did not persist in cultivation.
The next appearance of this odd plant in print, and beautifully photographed, was on page 260, Vol. XXXI, (1981) of the Journal of the Bromeliad Society. This article by Jeffrey Kent stated that the plant had been collected above Tumaco in southwest Colombia. Here it was identified as the long-lost Guzmania sanguinea var. erecta Andre.
The type specimen and illustration of var . erecta are very poor, old, and shattered. It is impossible to clearly determine the relationships of this taxon but it is clearly not with Guzmania sanguinea because var. erecta has a scapose, short cylindric inflorescence. The overall habit suggests that it may be conspecific with G. fusispica Mez & Sodiro. The illustration taken from Bromeliaceae Andreanae, plate XVII (fig. 3) clearly contrasts Guzmania (Caraguata) sanguinea with its proposed variety.
Shortly before Mr. Kent's expedition, Franz Gruber of the nursery Orchideas S.A. in Colombia introduced a limited number of plants of this taxon into Florida. These were also identified as G. sanguinea var. erecta. They have remained in horticulture but have never been widely distributed because of their limited potential for asexual propagation. Evidently no one has attempted to grow them from seed.
Finally, after more than 44 years since its discovery (and nearly 30 since it was introduced to horticulture), this confusing plant has a name, Guzmania sanguinea var. comosa Luther, published in Selbyana, volume 11 ( 1989) . This new variety differs from the type of the species by its larger floral bracts, with the axis of the inflorescence elongated above the flowers, and with a sterile tuft of bracts at the apex.
All growers possessing this guzmania are urged to alter their tags . —SeeLuther 1989a
