Aechmea nudicaulis(L.) Griseb.

nakedstem livingvase

WFO wfo-0000337813 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Aechmea nudicaulis, photographed by Cajá-manga
fig. a Cajá-manga, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-01-20 / obs. 177702063
Aechmea nudicaulis, photographed by Cajá-manga
fig. b Cajá-manga, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177704882
Aechmea nudicaulis, photographed by Carlos Henrique Russi
fig. c Carlos Henrique Russi, CC0 1.0 / obs. 176490857
Aechmea nudicaulis, photographed by Augusto Guerrante
fig. d Augusto Guerrante, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176862750
Aechmea nudicaulis, photographed by Trevor Van Loon
fig. e Trevor Van Loon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176616703
Aechmea nudicaulis, photographed by Cajá-manga
fig. f Cajá-manga, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172652904
Aechmea nudicaulis, photographed by Victor Farjalla Pontes
fig. g Victor Farjalla Pontes, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168258394
Aechmea nudicaulis, photographed by Carlos Henrique Russi
fig. h Carlos Henrique Russi, CC0 1.0 / obs. 164198947

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 25 botanical countries

Regions where Aechmea nudicaulis is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panamá, Peru, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Venezuelan Antilles Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEcuadorFrench GuianaGuyanaHaitiHondurasNicaraguaPanamáPeruPuerto RicoSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Venezuelan Antilles
Native distribution of Aechmea nudicaulis, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Brazil North BZN SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
French Guiana FRG
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Puerto Rico PUE
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Venezuelan Antilles VNA
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 178 in flower of 387 examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Aechmea nudicaulis 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. 178 of 387 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 980 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 10.1 °C 15.3 °C 22.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.2 °C 28.2 °C 31.0 °C
Annual rainfall 1,212 mm 1,833 mm 3,904 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 101 mm 276 mm 619 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 980 research-grade observations of Aechmea nudicaulis 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 44 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 aureorosea (Antoine) Baker
  • Aechmea cornui Carrière
  • Aechmea nudicaulis f. cornui (Carrière) Bois
  • Aechmea nudicaulis f. tabuleirensis (Reitz) Reitz
  • Aechmea nudicaulis var. capitata Reitz
  • Aechmea nudicaulis var. cornui Bois
  • Aechmea nudicaulis var. distans Wittm.
  • Aechmea nudicaulis var. flavomarginata E.Pereira
  • Aechmea nudicaulis var. plurifolia E.Pereira
  • Aechmea nudicaulis var. simulans E.Pereira
  • Aechmea nudicaulis var. sulcata (Lindm.) Mez
  • Aechmea nudicaulis var. tabuleirensis Reitz
  • Aechmea sulcata Lindm.
  • Aechmea tricolor Silveira
  • Billbergia aureorosea Baker
  • Billbergia lanuginosa K.Koch
  • Billbergia lutea Schult. & Schult.f.
  • Billbergia nudicaulis (L.) Lindl.
  • Billbergia oblonga Mart. ex Schult. & Schult.f.
  • Billbergia pyramidalis J.Forbes
  • Billbergia pyramidata Beer
  • Billbergia quadricolor C.Chev.
  • Bromelia gigantea Schult. & Schult.f.
  • Bromelia hookeri Sweet

and 20 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.