Tillandsia cyanea
We were rafting on the Pastaza River in the Oriente province of Ecuador and came upon a small village hacked out of the dense jungle. We smelled something cooking on the wafts of smoke that drifted over the water and decided to stop for the evening. We were greeted in the traditional way of such places: by dogs barking and children swarming us asking us for treats and laughing at our funny accents. We slowly made our way to the village chief who has final say on whether we were allowed to stay or not. Of course we were welcome and were ushered into the men’s house located in the center of the village. There we did our best to communicate, pantomiming our stories to great laughter from the village men. As we sat around the fire we were offered large bowls of steaming soup that smelled pretty good and heartily started to gulp it down. As we were drinking it we could see the large cauldron from which the soup came from. In the cauldron there were several objects bobbing up and down as the bubbles rose to the surface of the boiling soup. As one of the bobbing objects rose to the top of the soup it rotated to reveal a huge eyeball that seemed to stare at us as it slowly sank back down into the soup. We all stopped in mid slurp and looked at each other as the realization that we were eating goats head soup came over us. The entire room was quiet except for the sound of the crackling fire and the bubbling of the soup as the villagers waited for our response. At the same moment we all burst into laughter. The village men thought that was the funniest thing they had ever seen! On that trip we collected a lovely Bromeliad called Tallandsia cyanea which is endemic the area Tallandsia cyanea is an epiphytic perennial growing to 50 cm (20 in) high by 50 cm (20 in) wide that has stem-less rosettes of thin, recurved leaves and paddle-shaped spikes of 20 pink bracts with violet flowers, in spring and autumn. It is by far, one of the most stunning Tallandsias. The Latin specific epithet cyanea means "blue", referring to the intense purple-violet hue of the flowers. This Tallandsia makes an incredibly easy to care for and exotic houseplant thriving on a sunny windowsill. We offer these little gems in 4” containers.