Family: Bromeliad

Sub-Family: Tillandsioideae:

Genus: Tillandsia

Sub-Genus: Allardtia

Native distribution: Tillandsia disticha is native to Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. 

It grows on rocks and trees in areas of dry forests and has about half a dozen subspecies, as disticha Major and disticha Var. Disticha.  The smaller varieties of Tillandsia distich grow at lower levels of humidity and light conditions, but are still sturdy enough to tolerate drought and higher light intensities.

The larger plants thrive with more intense lighting, require frequent watering and good air flows. While they form clumps, with each plant going in a different direction from a stalon the form is quite open.

Habit: All plants have a base bulb erect with slender green leaves, sometime with a red tinge.  Naturally it is often found between seiscentros 1000 to 1650 meters above sea level. disticha Var. Disticha has shorter leaves. The plant is stoloniferous, where, new vegetative offsets grow on long hard stems that come out from the base of the mother plant.

Foliage:

Flowers: The petals of the flower is canary yellow and some have a soft sweet fragrance. The smaller varieties of disticha have brown margins of the floral bracts.

Seed:

Pups: After flowering, the pups begin to emerge as small shoots that become long stalons with the pup at the end, and as they grow larger the mother plant will begin to slowly die, leaving behind three to five new plants that will form an open clump.

Cultivation: While they like good light, they benefit from some shelter them from direct sun, especially during extreme heat.  

They grow in a wide range of temperature ranging from 10 º to 35 º C.

The watering must be done with rainwater or demineralized water, in the form of fog or mist.. The Because they capture nutrients from the air, Tillandsia disticha respond to good air ventilation or breeze, but do not tolerate high winds.

Fertilization: A mist every week with Epiphyites Delight or Epsom salts during the growing season will help the plant.

( Epiphyte’s Delight fertilizer was developed for a special reason. Nitrogen promotes foliar growth. If you have Tillandsias, Orchids, or other epiphytes and you feed them, take a look at the nitrogen content. If it’s high in urea, the plants can’t use it because the urea needs a bacteria in soil to break it down into ammonia and nitrates. Since the epiphytes don’t have any soil they can’t break down the urea. It was for this reason that we had Epiphyte’s Delight formulated. It contains only ammoniacal and nitrate nitrogen which is immediately accessible and usable by the plants.)

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