Pitcairnia flammea

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Pitcairnia flammea, photographed by Patrícia Hanate — fig. a Patrícia Hanate, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-04-24 / obs. 200743308

Pitcairnia flammea, photographed by Victor Farjalla Pontes — fig. b Victor Farjalla Pontes, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 146720614

Pitcairnia flammea, photographed by Diogo Luiz — fig. e Diogo Luiz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 51770625

Pitcairnia flammea, photographed by Jean-Paul Boerekamps — fig. f Jean-Paul Boerekamps, CC0 1.0 / obs. 104164942

Pitcairnia flammea, photographed by B. Phalan — fig. g B. Phalan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 6736371

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 3 botanical countries

Native distribution of Pitcairnia flammea, 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
Brazil Northeast	BZE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil South	BZS
Brazil Southeast	BZL

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 60 in flower of 84 examined

88%

86%

71%

73%

71%

40%

Proportion of examined Pitcairnia flammea in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	2	2	too few examined
Feb	7	8	88%	53% to 98%
Mar	6	7	86%	49% to 97%
Apr	15	21	71%	50% to 86%
May	11	15	73%	48% to 89%
Jun	5	7	71%	36% to 92%
Jul	3	4	too few examined
Aug	0	2	too few examined
Sep	1	2	too few examined
Oct	3	4	too few examined
Nov	5	7	71%	36% to 92%
Dec	2	5	40%	12% to 77%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Pitcairnia flammea 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. 60 of 84 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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.

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.

Hepetis cinnabarina (A.Dietr.) Mez
Hepetis claussenii (Mez) Mez
Hepetis dietrichiana (Wittm.) Mez
Hepetis flammea (Lindl.) Mez
Hepetis morelii (Lem.) Mez
Hepetis muscosa (Mart. ex Schult. & Schult.f.) Mez
Hepetis roezlii (É.Morren) Mez
Hepetis selloana (Baker) Mez
Hepetis splendens (Poit.) Mez
Hepetis weddelliana Mez
Pitcairnia amaryllidiflora Gentil
Pitcairnia australis K.Koch
Pitcairnia cinnabarina A.Dietr.
Pitcairnia claussenii Mez
Pitcairnia coccinea Girard
Pitcairnia decaisnei K.Koch
Pitcairnia dietrichiana Wittm.
Pitcairnia flammea var. glabra Regel & Körn.
Pitcairnia flammea var. typica L.B.Sm.
Pitcairnia fulgens F.Dietr.
Pitcairnia hypoleuca Mez
Pitcairnia laevis (Vell.) Beer
Pitcairnia leiolema Baker
Pitcairnia lherminieri hort. ex Baker

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.