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About Air Plants (Tillandsias)
Tillandsias, commonly known as Air Plants, are found anywhere and everywhere from dry deserts to humid rain forests and harsh mountain regions of southern parts of the United States, Mexico, Central and South America. In these often difficult, habitats they have developed into plants that don’t need much water.
These curious plants come from the Bromeliad family, which also includes a wide range of other plants, including the Pineapple. The bromeliad genus Tillandsia is named after the Finnish botanist Dr Elias Tillands and they are the most widespread type of bromeliad. With over 600 species currently known even more species are being discovered today as dedicated plant hunters seek them out.
Tillandsia are epiphytes they do not have roots, live without soil and take in water and nutrients through their leaves. If they are happy where they are, they will send out small, wiry anchor roots to hold them in the favourable situation that they find themselves in. They can live quite happily on trees and other plants without taking anything from them, and are just as happy to live on nothing, rocks or in the case of Spanish Moss, even telephone wires!
Taking water in through the leaves, air plants have adapted hair-like scales known as ‘trichomes’ to help them. Air Plants adapted to living in hotter and dryer areas have more of these trichomes, which gives them a more silvery appearance. As well as helping plants take up water they also help prevent it drying out by dispersing sunlight away from the leaves and shading the minute pores in the leaves, by which gases and water enter or leave the plant. The more silvery, or ‘fluffy’ the plant appears, eg. T. Tectorum ‘Snowy’, the more sunlight it can take.
The final part of the secret to their survival on such meagre water rations is the way they photosynthesise. Almost all other plants do this during the day, during which time gases and moisture will be released. In extreme temperatures it is not ideal to release essential water vapour during the day, so Tillandsia have developed the ability to keep their pores closed during the day, and releasing their gases and moisture during the night when there is less risk to them, due to lower night time temperatures. (As a benefit to us, if they are releasing precious oxygen through the night, it makes them ideal for the bedroom, where they could very well help with a better nights sleep!)
Air Plants vary greatly in size, shape and texture. Beautiful (sometimes fragrant) flowers are another remarkable feature of these plants. The flowers vary in colour, from purples, reds, pinks, yellows and whites. The blooming cycle for some rapidly growing species may be only a few months.
Air Plants reproduce by seed and offset. In their native habitats, they have adapted to conditions of often brisk air movement and intense sunlight. The plants have evolved a fuzzy, cottony attachment on the seed coat, this parachute-like apparatus allows the seed to travel on air currents for long distances. For this reason, you will find them high in trees and telegraph wires, where they rapidly colonize new habitat sites. Tillandsia offsets are called pups and can be left attached to the parent plant, eventually forming an attractive clump, or they can be separated and attached to something else to become a single plant.
Air Plants are very adaptable, tolerating a wide climatic range of conditions, which makes them suitable for any room in the house, and even outdoors in Summer. Once established in their new surroundings, they will grow, flower and thrive, given the right amount of water and feed.