Lutheria splendens(Brongn.) Barfuss & W.Till

WFO wfo-0001347245 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lutheria splendens, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. a Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-30 / obs. 166609024
Lutheria splendens, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. b Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159095078
Lutheria splendens, photographed by Paul Prior
fig. c Paul Prior, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 12412163
Lutheria splendens, photographed by Steven Bodzin
fig. d Steven Bodzin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 30897243
Lutheria splendens, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. e Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172504842
Lutheria splendens, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. f Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172502447
Lutheria splendens, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. g Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170484944
Lutheria splendens, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. h Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180821241

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 2692342
Filed as
Lutheria splendens (Brongn.) Barfuss & W.Till
Det. by
Kessous, Igor M.
Collected
P. Florschütz & P. Maas 1965-02-20
Origin
SR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 7 botanical countries

Regions where Lutheria splendens is native: Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Venezuelan Antilles ColombiaFrench GuianaGuyanaSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Venezuelan Antilles
Native distribution of Lutheria splendens, 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
Colombia CLM SOUTHERN AMERICA
French Guiana FRG
Guyana GUY
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Venezuelan Antilles VNA

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 150 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 18.2 °C 20.4 °C 21.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.8 °C 30.4 °C 32.1 °C
Annual rainfall 2,284 mm 2,912 mm 4,196 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 196 mm 271 mm 434 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 150 research-grade observations of Lutheria splendens 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 24 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.

  • Lutheria splendens var. chlorostachya (Oliva-Esteve) Barfuss & W.Till
  • Lutheria splendens var. formosa (Suringar ex Witte) Barfuss & W.Till
  • Lutheria splendens var. oinochroma (Steyerm.) Barfuss & W.Till
  • Lutheria splendens var. striatifolia (M.B.Foster) Barfuss & W.Till
  • Tillandsia appuniana Baker
  • Tillandsia longibracteata Baker
  • Tillandsia picta Baker
  • Tillandsia speciosa (Hook.) G.Nicholson
  • Tillandsia splendens Brongn.
  • Tillandsia splendens var. formosa Suringar ex Witte
  • Tillandsia zebrina hort. ex Gentil
  • Vriesea longibracteata (Baker) Mez
  • Vriesea speciosa Hook.
  • Vriesea splendens (Brongn.) Lem.
  • Vriesea splendens unranked minor Duval ex Wittm.
  • Vriesea splendens var. chlorostachya Oliva-Esteve
  • Vriesea splendens var. formosa Suringar ex Witte
  • Vriesea splendens var. longibracteata (Baker) L.B.Sm.
  • Vriesea splendens var. major Anon.
  • Vriesea splendens var. oinochroma Steyerm.
  • Vriesea splendens var. splendens
  • Vriesea splendens var. striatifolia M.B.Foster
  • Vriesea splendens var. wardelii Anon.
  • Werauhia splendens (Brongn.) Christenh. & Byng

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.