This plant did not flower until after it reached our garden in Florida.
This new variety is a very large plant and grows to be from two to three times as large as any of the several varieties of B. amoena. The leaves are of a rich red color and contain many white and yellow spots on them; they may attain a length of from twenty-four to thirty-six inches, with wider leaves than other varieties of this species.
Billbergia amoena is possibly the most variable species in the genus. Each locality in Brazil where this species is native, and it has quite an extensive range, seems to produce a different variety, although but few of them have been named. The writer has collected at least six different varieties and it would be quite easy to believe them to be different species until the flowers have appeared.
In sizes they range from eight inches to thirty-six inches in height and in leaf colors of plain, light or dark green, red-bronze, or maroon, to vividly spotted or blotched. But always the same flower with green ridged ovary and blue-green sepals and petals with blue tips. One exception, however, is B. amoena var. viridis which has the plain green petals and sepals minus the blue tips. This last variety has, possibly, the most colorful leaves of them all.
B. amoena with all of its varieties makes very interesting material for hybrids and, invariably, show its many definite varietal characters in any cross in which it is used. (Brom Soc Bull)
l. Billbergia amoena (Loddiges) Lindley var. amoena. Bot. Reg. 13 sub.pl. 1068. 1827.
TYPE. Loddiges Hortus in Lindley s/n (Holotype, CGE; Photo, GH).
-Syn.: B. amoena var. rubra Foster, Bull. Bromeliad Soc. 6:76.1956. TYPE. Brazil: Espirito -Santo, Vitoria, 13 Jul. 1939, Foster 2903 (Holotype, US).
In the original description the variety was distinguished as having red leaves, but field surveys have shown this color to be a result of different patterns of light intensity.
Plant very variable with 8-20 leaves, 19.0 - 90.0 cm long, 2.5-5.5 cm wide, ligulate, green, reddish or white-spotted;
sheaths large, elliptic; apex rounded or acute, apiculate or not; margins serrate or serrulate. Scape 0.3-0.5 cm in diameter, erect or ascending, slender or stout, completely glabrous or with some evanescent scales, green or reddish.
Scape bracts suberect, elliptic; apex apiculate or acuminate, reddish to pink exposing the scape. Inflorescence 2.0-14.0 cm long, usually compound but sometimes simple, lax, nearly glabrous; primary bracts like scape bracts.
Floral bracts 0.1 cm long, the upper ones reniform, apiculate.
Flowers 3.5-7.5 cm long, sessile.
Sepals 1.7-3.0 cm long, narrowly elliptic to oblong; apex blue, acute or minutely acuminate with white evanescent scales; lower part greenish.
Petals 3.0-5.5 cm long, obtuse with blue apex, adaxially with two fimbriate scales at base and two long, narrow calli placed laterally to stamens.
Ovary 0.6-1.8 cm long, cylindric, green, sharply sulcate.
Flowering from March to October.
Habit: epiphytic, saxicolous and terrestrial; habitat: Atlantic rain forest and sand dune coastal plains. Very frequent in the Rio de Janeiro coastal plains. —SeeFontoura 1994p. 15(2): 79-81
