Aechmea distichantha

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Aechmea distichantha, photographed by Romi Galeota Lencina — fig. b Romi Galeota Lencina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 181362848

Aechmea distichantha, photographed by Tomás Carranza Perales — fig. c Tomás Carranza Perales, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168122130

Aechmea distichantha, photographed by Hugo Hulsberg — fig. d Hugo Hulsberg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 165992329

Aechmea distichantha, photographed by Bruno Henrique Aranda — fig. e Bruno Henrique Aranda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 148756392

Aechmea distichantha, photographed by Leonel Roget — fig. f Leonel Roget, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153226454

Aechmea distichantha, photographed by Eduardo Luis Beltrocco — fig. h Eduardo Luis Beltrocco, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 109569881

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 7 botanical countries

Native distribution of Aechmea distichantha, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Argentina Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bolivia	BOL
Brazil South	BZS
Brazil Southeast	BZL
Brazil West-Central	BZC
Paraguay	PAR
Uruguay	URU

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 179 in flower of 230 examined

83%

88%

62%

83%

80%

76%

92%

85%

97%

48%

44%

Proportion of examined Aechmea distichantha in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	3	4	too few examined
Feb	5	6	83%	44% to 97%
Mar	7	8	88%	53% to 98%
Apr	8	13	62%	36% to 82%
May	15	18	83%	61% to 94%
Jun	16	20	80%	58% to 92%
Jul	16	21	76%	55% to 89%
Aug	22	24	92%	74% to 98%
Sep	39	46	85%	72% to 92%
Oct	30	31	97%	84% to 99%
Nov	11	23	48%	29% to 67%
Dec	7	16	44%	23% to 67%

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Aechmea distichantha observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 179 of 230 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,029 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	5.8 °C	10.0 °C	13.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	21.8 °C	27.0 °C	32.0 °C
Annual rainfall	1,066 mm	1,634 mm	2,359 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	32 mm	168 mm	379 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,029 research-grade observations of Aechmea distichantha that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 41 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Aechmea brasiliensis Regel
Aechmea distichantha f. albiflora L.B.Sm.
Aechmea distichantha f. distichantha
Aechmea distichantha var. typica L.B.Sm.
Aechmea excavata Baker
Aechmea glaziovii Baker
Aechmea grandiceps (Griseb.) Mez
Aechmea hookeri Lem.
Aechmea involucrifera Mez
Aechmea microphylla Mez
Aechmea minor É.Morren
Aechmea myriophylla É.Morren ex Baker
Aechmea platyphylla Hassl.
Aechmea polystachia (Lindl. & Paxton) Mez
Aechmea polystachia var. excavata (Baker) Mez
Aechmea polystachya Mez
Aechmea polystachya var. excavata (Baker) Mez
Aechmea polystachya var. longifolia A.Cast.
Aechmea polystachya var. myriophylla Hassl.
Aechmea pulchella É.Morren ex Mez
Aechmea regelii Mez
Aechmea rubra Silveira
Billbergia distichostachya Lem.
Billbergia polystachia Lindl. & Paxton

and 17 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.