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BROMELIACEAE

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Originally appearing in Volume V04, Page 632 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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BROMELIACEAE , in See also:

botany, a natural See also:order of Monocotyledons, confined to tropical and sub-tropical See also:America. It includes the See also:pine-See also:apple (fig. I) and the so-called See also:Spanish See also:moss (fig.. 2); a rootless. plant, which hangs in See also:long See also:grey See also:lichen-like festoons from the branches of trees, a native of See also:Mexico and the See also:southern See also:United States," the See also:water required for See also:food is absorbed from the moisture in the See also:air by See also:peculiar hairs which See also:cover the FiG.I.—Fruit of the pine-apple (Ananas sativa), consisting of numerous See also:flowers and bracts united together so as to See also:form a collective or anthocarpous See also:fruit. The See also:crown of (From The Botanical See also:Magazine, by permission of See also:Lovell, the pine-apple, c, See also:con- See also:Reeve & Co.) sists of a See also:series of FIG. 2.—Tillandsia usneoides, Spanish empty bracts See also:pro- moss, 'slightly reduced. 1, Small See also:branch longed beyond the with See also:flower; 2, flower cut vertically; 3, fruit. , . See also:section of 'See also:seed of Bromelia See also:surface of the shoots. The See also:plants are generally herbs with a much shortened See also:stem bearing a rosette of leaves and a spike or panicle of flowers. They are eminently dry-See also:country plants (xerophytes) ; the narrow leaves are protected from loss of water by a thick cuticle, and have a well-See also:developed sheath which embraces the stem and forms, with the sheaths of the other leaves of the rosette, a See also:basin in which water collects, with fragments of rotting leaves and the like. Peculiar hairs are developed on the inner surface of the sheath by which the water and dissolved substances are absorbed, thus helping to feed the plant. The See also:leaf-margins are often spiny, and the leaf-spines of Puya chilensis are used by the natives as See also:fish-hooks.

Several See also:

species are grown as hot-See also:house plants for the See also:bright See also:colour of their flowers or ' flower-bracts, e.g. species of Tillandsia, Billbergia, Aechmea and others.

End of Article: BROMELIACEAE

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