Aechmea pittieri Mez

Aechmea pittieri Mez, in DC. Monog Phan. 9: 231. 1896.
Leaves at least 8 dm. long; sheaths unknown; blades ligulate, acuminate, pungent, 75 mm. wide, lepidote especially below, laxly spinose-serrate with stout, nearly straight, brown-tipped teeth up to 1 cm. long; scape erect, stout, whitetomentulose ; scape-bracts erect, tubularinvolute, densely imbricate, lance-elliptic, pungent, entire or rarely with a few teeth, bright-red; inflorescence paniculate, laxly tripinnate, pyramidal, 33 cm. long, 20 cm. in diameter; axes tomentulose at first, soon glabrous; primary bracts like the scape-bracts, the lower about half as long as the axillary branches, the upper much reduced; branches all fertile throughout, subspreading, long-stipitate with the spikes clustered at the end ; secondary bracts barely larger than the floral bracts; spikes laxly about 10-flowered, linear in outline, up to 1 dm. long; rhachis strongly geniciJate, complanate, excavated nest the flowers; floral bracts erect, suborbicular, broadly rounded with a mucro 2 mm. long at the apex, 10 mm. long including the mucro, 9 mm. wide, only one to one and a half times as long as the internodes, exceeding the sepals, entire, prominently ner-ed, minutely white-arachnoid, soon glabrous, entire, the margin free from the rhachis; flowers appressed to the rhachis; sepals barely asymmetric, 4 mm. long, miiuitcly mucronate, white-tomentulose especially toward the base, free; petals 10 mm. long, not mucronate, bearing 2 fimbriate scales high above the base; stamens much shorter than the petals, the filaments of the second series much connate with the petals, the anthers narrow, 1.5 mm. long, mucTonulate; pistil about equaling the petals, the epigynous tube very short; ovary 3-angled.
Type LOCAUTi': Boruca, near Buenos-Aires, Costa Rica. Distribution: Known only from the type localities.

Aechmea pittieri is a plant species in the genus Aechmea. This species is native to Costa Rica and Panama.