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Puya raimondii
Also called Queen of the Puna
A giant monocarpic bromeliad from the high Andes, forming a large rosette of spiny leaves that flowers once after many years, sending up a tall flower spike, then dies. Grown as a specialist plant in cold, high-altitude or botanic garden settings, not a typical houseplant.
Puya raimondii, also known as the Queen of the Andes (English), titanka and ilakuash (Quechua) or puya de Raimondi (Spanish), is the largest species of bromeliad, its inflorescences reaching up to 15 m (50 ft) in height. It is native to the high Andes of Bolivia and Peru.
The Queen of the Andes' habit of semelparity, reproducing once and dying shortly afterwards, has evolved independently in very distantly related organisms. In plants, this monocarpic strategy is quite common with annual and biennial plants being short-lived examples, but it is a much rarer strategy for long-lived plants. Other species with unbranched rosettes like Puya raimondii have been known to evolve this trait.
Sapphire Tower · Puya angelensis · Puya · Sotol Puya · Puya
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Puya raimondii by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
