BROMELIATEE, a natural order of monocotyledonous plants, allied to amctryllidecs and iridea, stemless, or with short stems, and rigid, channeled, often spiny and scaly leaves. The flowers are in racemes or panicles; the calyx 3-parted or tubular, persistent, more or less cohering with the ovary; the petals three, withering or deciduous, equal or unequal, imbricated in bud. The stamens are six, inserted into the tube of the calyx and corolla, the anthers opening inwards. The ovary is 3-celled, the style single, the fruit capsular or succulent, many-seeded; the seeds with a minute embryo lying in the base of mealy albumen.—The order contains about 170 known species, all natives of the warmer parts of America, although some of them are now naturalized both in Asia and Africa. The best known plant of the order, and the only one much valued for its fruit, is the pineapple (q.v.). B., with their strong spiny leaves, cover the ground in many places, so as to form impenetrable thickets. Many of them are epiphytic, or grow upon trees, without being parasites, particularly the species of tillandsia, one of which is the New Orleans moss, long beard, or old man's beard of the West Indies and of the southern parts of the United States, hanging from the trees like the lichens of colder climates. The leaves of some are so formed and placed as to retain near their base a quantity of water: often affording a delicious refreshment to the traveler in a hot climate. The water is, perhaps, of use to the plant itself in droughts. Not a few of the B. are capable of vegetating long without contact with earth, and of sustaining long drought without inconvenience, for which reason, and because of their beautiful and fragrant flowers, some of them are very frequently suspended from balconies in South America as air plants. But the plants of this order are more generally valuable for their fibers than upon any other account. Tillandsia•usneoides, the New Orleans moss already mentioned, yields a fiber, easily obtained, and in great abundance, which is used instead of hair for stuffing mattresses. The fibers of the leaves of the pineapple, and of some other species •of this order, have been made into fabrics resembling the finest white muslin, whilst,they are found also to possess sufficient strength for cordage. It is supposed that the produce •of different species of bromelia is often included along with that of the American aloe or
.agare (q.v.), under the name of pita fiber or pita flax, the appearance and properties of the fibers being very similar, as well as those also of the fibers of the species of yucca.. The fiber of the pineapple is, in some countries, very frequently twisted into fishing lines, and made into nets and into ropes intended for immersion in water, being very little liable to injury from this cause. Abundant as the plant is in its native regions, and now so perfectly naturalized as to form thickets in many parts of the old world, there seems no limit to the quantity of this fiber which might be procured.—The pine apple cloth of the Philippines is called pina muslin and batiste d'ananas. It is also some times erroneously called "With a magnifier, the fibers may be seen to be very numerous and fine, but not twisted at all, as in grass-cloth or the finest muslins and cambrics." The Philippine pineapple fiber is obtained from a species called by the Spaniardspigna or pina (a cone), and which has by botanists been named bromelia myna, although some regard it as a mere variety of the pineapple, with small and rather dry fruit. It grows in great abundance in the Philippine islands, and is cultivated by the Chinese near Singapore, and the fiber exported to China. This fiber is prepared also in Malacca, •Java, Celebes, etc. When bleached, the pineapple fiber can be spun like flax. A patent for this has been taken out in Britain by Mr. Ziucke.
The WILD ANANAS (bromelia pinguin) of the West Indies, the bromelia karatas, com mon in South America, the B. sagenaria, common in some parts of Brazil, and the bill bergia rariegata, which grows in wild luxuriance in Mexico, where it is called caroa, often covering miles of country—all yield fibers which are used for cloth, cordage, nets, etc. The fiber of bromelia sagenaria is known as curratow fiber. Very strong ropes are made of it.
The genus bromelia has a 3-parted calyx shorter than the corolla, and the fruit is succu lent. The species are pretty numerous, the leaves of all of them are more or less char acterized by spiny serratures: The fruit of B. pinguin, already mentioned, affords a cooling juice, which is used in the West Indies mixed with water, to make a drink for patients in fever and dysentery. It is said to be diuretic. A vinous liquor is sometimes made from it.