My Airplants are blooming, so I am very happy to share the pictures of these colorful steem blooms of red, yellow and purple!
They are also commonly known as airplants because of their natural propensity to cling wherever conditions permit: telephone wires, tree branches, barks, bare rocks, etc. Their light seeds and a silky parachute facilitate this spread.[3] Most Tillandsia species are epiphytes – which translates to 'upon a plant'.[4] Some are aerophytes, which have a minimal root system and grow on shifting desert soil.
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They have naturally been established in diverse environments such as equatorial tropical rain forests, high elevation Andes mountains, rock dwelling (saxicolous) regions, and Louisiana swamps, such as Spanish moss (T. usneoides), a species that grows atop tree limbs. But there are also species that live lithophytic, so on rocks (but also roofs and even telephone wires).
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Tillandsia is a genus of around 650 species of evergreen, perennial flowering plants in the family Bromeliaceae, native to the forests, mountains and deserts of northern Mexico and south-eastern United States, Mesoamerica and the Caribbean to mid Argentina. Their leaves, more or less silvery in color, are covered with specialized cells (trichomes) capable of rapidly absorbing water that gathers on them.
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