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Daily Bucket: Tillandsia Air Plant [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-11
The Daily Bucket is a regular series from the Backyard Science group. Here we talk about Mother Nature in all her glory, especially the parts that live nearby. So let us know (as close as you are comfortable) where you are and what's going on around you. What's the weather like? Seen any interesting plants, bugs or critters? Are there birds at your feeders? Deer, foxes or snakies in your yard? Seen any cool rocks or geological features? Post your observations and notes here. And photos. We like photos. :)
There are over 500 different species of Tillandsia found in South and Central America, the Caribbean, and the southern US. Five species are found in Florida, though only two are common in Tampa Bay—Tillandsia usneoides, well-known as “Spanish Moss”, and Tillandsia recurvata, called “Ball Moss” by botanists. The two look nothing alike, and you’d never know from looking at them that they are in any way related: the familiar Spanish Moss forms loose dangling clumps that drape over tree branches like a greenish waterfall, while Ball Moss (better-known by most people as “air plants”) takes the form of loose globular balls, ranging from golf-ball to softball size, which often grow along twigs and small branches, like beads on a necklace.
The air plants, as their name indicates, don’t grow in the ground. Instead, they grow suspended in mid-air, perched on the twigs and branches of other plants. Tillandsia are not parasites; they are known technically as “epiphytes”—they do not take any nutrients or water from their host plant, and use their host only for support to hold them in place off the ground. They do no harm at all to their host plants.
Despite their name, the Tillandsia “ball mosses” are not really mosses; they are actually perennial flowering plants in the Bromeliad family, and are closely related to pineapples. The leaves are shaped something like long conical tentacles, and are usually a silvery-grey color and look as if they are coated with powdery scales (these scales are known as “trichomes”, and they help the plant absorb water and nutrients from the air). The flowers can bloom all year round, and look like little blue spikes at the end of a protruding stalk, which then produce clublike greenish-brown seed capsules. The mature seeds are dispersed by the wind, each carried away on a tuft of hairlike fibers until it happens to land on a suitable tree branch and begin growing, using tiny rootlike tendrils to anchor itself to the tree until the long tubelike leafs can wrap around and secure it in place.
With no roots and no soil, Tillandsia are adapted to very low levels of nutrients, getting all their necessary minerals from rainwater and from the organic dust and dirt that settles onto the leaves—a sudden large dose of nutrients can actually poison the plant and kill it. Because of this, they are very slow growers. Tillandsia also use bacteria that live in their trichome scales to extract nitrogen directly from the air to form nitrates that can then be used by the plant as a form of fertilizer (something very few plants can do). Therefore, the dead Tillandsia that eventually fall to the ground and decay actually serve as a good fertilizer for other plants by returning nitrogen to the soil.
Spanish Moss
Tillandsia Air Plant
A flower
Tillandsia on a Bald Cypress
A string of Tillandsia
Giant Air Plant, Tillandsia utriculata, a species found in south Florida
My “pet” Tillandsia, rescued from a downed tree during the hurricane last year. They live in my window in little 3d-printed pots.
And now it is your turn—what’s hanging around in your neck of the woods?
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