Bromeliads with their sculptural pineapple lookalike qualities are popular plants for display areas, restaurants, patios and such in Japan.
A bromeliad. See Bromeliad Biota page.
Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) is a large family of flowering plants native to the tropical and warm temperate New World. The family includes both epiphytes, such as Spanish moss, Tillandsia usneoides, and ground plants, such as the PINEAPPLE Ananas comosus. Christopher Columbus was the first European to come into contact with the pineapple and took it back to Europe after his first voyage. Many bromeliads are able to store water in a “tank” formed by their tightly-overlapping leaf bases. However, the family is diverse enough to include the tank bromeliads, grey-leaved epiphytic Tillandsia species which gather water only from leaf structures called trichomes, and even a large number of desert-dwelling succulents.
The largest bromeliad is Puya raimondii, which reaches 3-4 m tall in vegetative growth with a flower spike 9-10 m tall. (Source: Wikipedia)
NATURE IN JAPAN 