Specialists at Rio de Janeiro’s Botanical Garden have come across a rare species of bromeliad in its grounds. They named it
Wittmackia aurantiolilacina, due to the orange and lilac colors of its inflorescence.
The species was described by researcher Bruno Rezende – one of the authors of the study and curator of the scientific bromeliad collection at Rio’s Botanical Garden – in an article published on November 19 this year in the journal Phytotaxa, considered the world’s leading scientific journal in the field of botanical taxonomy.
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The species is endemic to the Atlantic forest biome and was collected in the Alto Cariri National Park, in Bahia state. It was collected in August 2023 by a team from the Botanical Garden on an expedition for an environment preservation initiative.
“It was collected in August 2023, but it had no flowers. It was what we call sterile, a bromeliad that did not raise any suspicion of being something so special,” Bruno Rezende told Agência Brasil. It was then incorporated into the scientific collection of the Botanical Garden’s bromeliad nursery and also into the Refúgio dos Gravatás, in Teresópolis, in the mountainous region of the state.
Flowering
The bromeliad bloomed in July 2024 at the Botanical Garden, leading the researcher to suspect it was a new species, “because the inflorescence has a highly unusual combination of colors – orange with lilac – which is not something I have seen in bromeliads in 30 years,” he said.
He contacted an expert in the genus, with whom he developed a more detailed study of the plant, and together they published an article in an international journal.
Even though the orange and lilac inflorescence caught the researchers’ attention, Bruno Rezende said that what defines the new species is a set of characteristics related to the shape of the sepals and petals, the size they reach between these structures, “and also the coloration, which gave the plant its name.” The sepals of bromeliads are usually green and their main function is to protect the flower bud.
There is only one pot of the new bromeliad in Rio’s Botanical Garden. Depending on the nutritional input, Rezende noted, two or three vegetative shoots will form per year. These are lateral shoots.
“This enables vegetative propagation, which is clonal or asexual propagation.” In this case, the seedlings are genetically identical to the mother plant.
The expert pointed out, however, that if the flowers are pollinated, seeds can be obtained. And each seed system is a genetically distinct individual, as it originates from sexual reproduction.
Predators
Rezende states that it would not be advisable to plant this type of bromeliad in trees, because it is native to the Atlantic forest in southern Bahia and could spread throughout the biome in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
Besides, there are many capuchin monkeys in the Botanical Garden’s arboretum. “And unfortunately, they have developed a macabre taste for bromeliads. They eat the palm hearts inside the leaves and kill the bromeliads. That’s what they like. In the bromeliad garden, we still have more control because there is a fence, security guards, and gardeners.”
The newly discovered bromeliad species has already been classified as “critically endangered” because, despite being a national park, the Botanical Garden is a vast area subject to a number of impacts.
“It’s difficult to monitor such a large area. There’s a lot of fire, a lot of deforestation, a lot of cocoa and coffee farming – in addition to climate change, which in the coming decades will likely significantly alter the entire Atlantic forest.”
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