Aechmea setigeraMart. ex Schult. & Schult.f.

WFO wfo-0000337941 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Aechmea setigera, photographed by chelina batista
fig. a chelina batista, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 192673370

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
755784
Filed as
Aechmea setigera Mart. ex Schult. & Schult.f.
Det. by
L. B. Smith 1982-01-01
Collected
S. R. Lowrie 1980-10-19
Origin
BR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 10 botanical countries

Regions where Aechmea setigera is native: Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Panamá, Suriname, Venezuela BoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaEcuadorFrench GuianaPanamáSurinameVenezuela
Native distribution of Aechmea setigera, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Bolivia BOL SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Ecuador ECU
French Guiana FRG
Panamá PAN
Suriname SUR
Venezuela VEN

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 147 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 21.7 °C 23.4 °C 23.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.2 °C 29.8 °C 33.5 °C
Annual rainfall 2,211 mm 2,712 mm 3,270 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 85 mm 107 mm 377 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 147 research-grade observations of Aechmea setigera 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.

Also published as 2 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 prieuriana Baker
  • Echinostachys prieuriana Brongn. ex Baker

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. 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.