Bot. [mod.L. (Linnæus), named after Elias Tillands, a Swedish botanist.] A large genus of herbaceous plants of the pine-apple family (Bromeliaceæ), found in tropical and subtropical America and the West Indies, chiefly epiphytic on trees.
T. usneoides, also called long-beard, long-moss, hanging moss, or Florida moss, forms long pendent grey tufts, the fibers of which are used for stuffing mattresses, etc.; other species, as T. utriculata, have the leaves dilated at the base so as to form a reservoir for water; many others are cultivated for ornament.
1759. B. Stillingfl., trans. Biber’s Econ. Nat., in Misc. Tracts (1762), 76. The tillandsia, which … grows on the tops of trees in the desarts of America, has its leaves turned at the base into the shape of a pitcher…; in these the rain is collected, and preserved for thirsty men, birds, and beasts.
1860. Gosse, Rom. Nat. Hist., 61. The tillandsias nestle at the ramification of the smaller branches,… where they often grow to an immense size.
1863. Russell, Diary North & South, I. 220. The overlacing arms and intertwined branches of the tillandsia or Spanish moss, a weeping, drooping, plumaceous parasite, which … clings to the tree everlastingly.
1896. Daily News, 16 March, 6/5. A number of species of the so-called air plants—Tillandsias—exhibited.
