Tillandsia fendleri

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Tillandsia fendleri, photographed by novvictan — fig. b novvictan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 127546725

Tillandsia fendleri, photographed by GERMAN LEONEL SARMIENTO CRUZ — fig. c GERMAN LEONEL SARMIENTO CRUZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 105387108

Tillandsia fendleri, photographed by Andrés Ramírez-Barrera — fig. d Andrés Ramírez-Barrera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 54266016

Tillandsia fendleri, photographed by Steven Bodzin — fig. e Steven Bodzin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 45925893

Tillandsia fendleri, photographed by Daniel A. Monsalve Ortiz — fig. g Daniel A. Monsalve Ortiz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 36886796

Tillandsia fendleri, photographed by cstobie — fig. h cstobie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 34521460

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 12 botanical countries

Native distribution of Tillandsia fendleri, 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
Bolivia	BOL	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North	BZN
Colombia	CLM
Cuba	CUB
Dominican Republic	DOM
Ecuador	ECU
Guyana	GUY
Haiti	HAI
Jamaica	JAM
Peru	PER
Trinidad-Tobago	TRT
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 409 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	8.3 °C	11.0 °C	16.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	18.2 °C	20.7 °C	25.0 °C
Annual rainfall	1,098 mm	1,830 mm	3,467 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	67 mm	229 mm	560 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 409 research-grade observations of Tillandsia fendleri 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 10 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.

Tillandsia bangii Baker ex Rusby
Tillandsia deppeana var. latifolia (Griseb.) L.B.Sm.
Tillandsia deppeana var. reducta (L.B.Sm.) L.B.Sm.
Tillandsia excelsa var. latifolia Griseb.
Tillandsia incurvata C.Wright
Tillandsia kalbreyeri Baker
Tillandsia paniculata var. fendleri (Griseb.) Mez
Tillandsia paniculata var. latifolia (Griseb.) Mez
Tillandsia rubra var. fendleri (Griseb.) Mez
Tillandsia rubra var. reducta L.B.Sm.

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.