BI1031ELIATE2E, or BROMELI/E, Bromelworta, the Pino-Apple Tribe, a natural order of Endogenous plants, taking its name from the genus to which the pine-apple was once incorrectly referred [Ame3lessa], and consisting of herbaceous plants, remarkable for the hardness and dryness of their gray foliage. They occur in great abundance in the tropical parte of the New World, or in such extra-tropical countries as, owing to local circumstances, have a climate of a tropical nature. Sometinica they are found growing on the earth in forests, but more commonly they spring up from the branches of trees, round which they coil their simple succulent roots, vegetating upon the decayed matter they may find there, and absorbing their food in a great measure from the atmosphere. Their leaven are always packed together so very closely at the base as to form a kind of cup, in which water collects; so that the traveller who ascends the trees on which they grow, if ho upset ono of these plants, as he easily may, is unexpectedly deluged by a shower, the source of which ho would not have suspected. The flowers of most are pretty, and of some of them remarkably handsome and sweet-scented; but the fruit is in no case of any value except in the genus Ananassa. Bromeliacece
may be shortly described as scurfy-leaved hexandrous endegens, with distinct calyx and corolla, an inferior ovary, and seeds whose embryo lies in mealy albumen. They are known from A maryllidacece by the last circumstance, by their bard scurfy leaves, and epiphytal habit; from Burmanniacem, by their leaves not being equitant, nor their fruit winged ; and from Taccacecs by all their habit, and their fruit being 3-celled, with central placentae.
The green fruit of the wild Pine-Apple, as well as Bromelia Pinguin and others, are used as anthelmintics and diuretics in the West Indies. The leaves of Tillandsia usneoides are used for stuffing mattresses. A gum flows from the spike of Puya lanuginosa. A dye is extracted from the root of Billbergia tinctoria. Muslin has been manufactured from the fibres of the common Pine-Apple. Many species are cultivated in the hot-houses of this country, the most beautiful of which belong to the genera Bromelia and Billbergia. They all grow readily in decayed tan. No species has been yet seen wild in any part of the Old World. The order contains 23 genera, and 170 species.