Racinaea spiculosa(Griseb.) M.A.Spencer & L.B.Sm.

WFO wfo-0000508780 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 5 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 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.

Racinaea spiculosa, photographed by Cajá-manga
fig. a Cajá-manga, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-02-13 / obs. 181195349
Racinaea spiculosa, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. b Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172528823
Racinaea spiculosa, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. c Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184554457
Racinaea spiculosa, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. d Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 181026538
Racinaea spiculosa, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. e Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 181049899
Racinaea spiculosa, photographed by Guillaume Delaitre
fig. f Guillaume Delaitre, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 181049953

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
01552619
Filed as
Racinaea spiculosa var. stenoglossa (L.B.Sm.) M.A.Spencer & L.B.Sm.
Det. by
T. S. Coser 2012-05-01
Collected
N. T. da Silva 1966-01-27
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 17 botanical countries

Regions where Racinaea spiculosa is native: Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Panamá, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Venezuelan Antilles BoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastColombiaCosta RicaDominican RepublicEcuadorFrench GuianaGuyanaPanamáPeruSurinameTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Venezuelan Antilles
Native distribution of Racinaea spiculosa, 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
Bolivia BOL SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
French Guiana FRG
Guyana GUY
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
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 79 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 10.9 °C 14.4 °C 21.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.7 °C 27.6 °C 32.2 °C
Annual rainfall 1,403 mm 2,514 mm 4,259 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 117 mm 277 mm 525 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 79 research-grade observations of Racinaea spiculosa 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 19 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.

  • Racinaea spiculosa var. ustulata (Reitz) M.A.Spencer & L.B.Sm.
  • Tillandsia brittoniana Baker
  • Tillandsia chinchicuana Harms
  • Tillandsia micrantha Baker
  • Tillandsia micrantha Baker
  • Tillandsia palmana Mez
  • Tillandsia parkeri Baker
  • Tillandsia spiculosa Griseb.
  • Tillandsia spiculosa var. micrantha (Baker) L.B.Sm.
  • Tillandsia spiculosa var. palmana (Mez) L.B.Sm.
  • Tillandsia spiculosa var. spiculosa
  • Tillandsia spiculosa var. stenoglossa (L.B.Sm.) Gouda
  • Tillandsia spiculosa var. typica L.B.Sm.
  • Tillandsia spiculosa var. ustulata (Reitz) L.B.Sm.
  • Tillandsia stenoglossa L.B.Sm.
  • Tillandsia triticea Burch. ex Baker
  • Tillandsia triticea var. ustulata Reitz
  • Tillandsia viridis Baker
  • Vriesea luschnathii Mez

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.