Puya raimondi
| Puya raimondii | |
|---|---|
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| Puya raimondii flowering in Ayacucho, Peru. | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Angiosperms |
| Clade: | Monocots |
| Clade: | Commelinids |
| Order: | Poales |
| Family: | Bromeliaceae |
| Genus: | Puya |
| Species: | P. raimondii |
| Binomial name | |
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Puya raimondii Harms |
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Puya raimondii, also known as queen of the Andes (English),titanka (Quechua) or puya de Raimondi (Spanish), is the largest species of bromeliad. It is native to Bolivia and Peru and is restricted to the high Andes at an elevation of 3000 – 4800 m.
The first scientific description of this species was made in 1830 by the French scientist Alcide d'Orbigny after he encountered it in the region of Vacas, Cochabamba, in Bolivia at an altitude of 3960 m (12,992 ft). However, as the plants he saw were immature and not yet flowering, he could not classify them taxonomically.
The specific name of raimondii commemorates the 19th-century Italian scientist Antonio Raimondi, who immigrated to Peru and made extensive botanical expeditions there. He discovered this species later in the region of Chavín de Huantar and published it as Pourretia gigantea in his 1874 book El Perú, but the book had little distribution outside Peru and the plant remained unknown to the larger world. In 1928, the name was changed to Puya raimondii by the German botanist Hermann Harms when he saw the earliest known photograph of the species, and realized that something remarkable had been overlooked. He prepared a fresh description because Raimondi's description was deficient in several ways.
It is not only the largest of the Puya species, but also the largest species of bromeliad. It can reach 3 m tall in vegetative growth, with a rosette of around a hundred sword-like leaves up to five feet (1.5 meters) in length topping a trunk up to four feet (1.2 meters) thick. The trunk, peduncle and inflorescence together can reach as much as fifty feet (15 meters) in total height. It can produce an inflorescence (technically a spiciform panicle) 16 to 23 feet (5 to 7 meters) in length bearing between 8,000 and 20,000 flowers, and a total of six million seeds from each plant.
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Wikipedia