Tillandsia juncea(Ruiz & Pav.) Poir.

WFO wfo-0000580218 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Tillandsia juncea, photographed by Arthur de Jesús Chavarría Pérez
fig. a Arthur de Jesús Chavarría Pérez, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-13 / obs. 182793587
Tillandsia juncea, photographed by Jake Rehage
fig. b Jake Rehage, CC0 1.0 / obs. 118582797
Tillandsia juncea, photographed by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez
fig. c Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 91165136
Tillandsia juncea, photographed by Oscar Marín
fig. d Oscar Marín, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 36094518
Tillandsia juncea, photographed by Diana Fuentes
fig. e Diana Fuentes, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 17850085
Tillandsia juncea, photographed by Juan Carlos Pérez Magaña
fig. f Juan Carlos Pérez Magaña, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 19573418
Tillandsia juncea, photographed by Juan Carlos Pérez Magaña
fig. g Juan Carlos Pérez Magaña, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 7309531
Tillandsia juncea, photographed by Neptalí Ramírez Marcial
fig. h Neptalí Ramírez Marcial, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 1300959

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 25 botanical countries

Regions where Tillandsia juncea is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil Northeast, Brazil Southeast, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panamá, Peru, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestBelizeBoliviaBrazil NortheastBrazil SoutheastColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEcuadorEl SalvadorGuatemalaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáPeruTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela
Native distribution of Tillandsia juncea, 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
Belize BLZ SOUTHERN AMERICA
Bolivia BOL
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil Southeast BZL
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
Guatemala GUA
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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 39 in flower of 85 examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Tillandsia juncea 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. 39 of 85 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 404 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 6.9 °C 12.1 °C 18.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.8 °C 27.3 °C 33.4 °C
Annual rainfall 671 mm 1,568 mm 2,848 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 17 mm 57 mm 282 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 404 research-grade observations of Tillandsia juncea 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 6 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.

  • Acanthospora juncea (Ruiz & Pav.) Spreng.
  • Bonapartea juncea Ruiz & Pav.
  • Misandra juncea (Ruiz & Pav.) F.Dietr.
  • Platystachys juncea (Ruiz & Pav.) Beer
  • Tillandsia juncifolia Regel
  • Tillandsia quadrangularis M.Martens & Galeotti

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.