Marcie Gonzalez photographed a hummingbird flying near Puya venusta blossoms at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens on May 3. “I love taking pictures of hummingbirds and can spend hours in ... You don't forget your first puya.

Understanding the Context

In Quail Botanical Gardens in San Diego County about 20 years ago, we came upon an apparition: Out of a bristly rosette of basal leaves rose a head-high stalk of ... Puya is a genus of the botanical family Bromeliaceae. It is the sole genus of the subfamily Puyoideae, and is composed of 226 species. [1][2] These terrestrial plants are native to the Andes Mountains of South America and southern Central America.

Key Insights

Puya, genus of South American plants of the pineapple family (Bromeliaceae) that contains about 200 species, including the tallest bromeliads. P. gigas (P. raimondii), native to northern South America, grows to more than 10 m (about 33 feet) tall and forms a flower stalk nearly 5.4 m tall. It’s that fruitiness, with hints of cherry, that keep fans of the puya coming back for more.

Final Thoughts

As a seasoning, puya peppers are very versatile – often used to bring that fruity spice to everything from mole sauces and chutneys to burritos and pizzas. Puya is a little known bromeliad from South and Central America that grow as an unassuming but thorny twisted leaf mass, but also some of the most spectacular plants in the plant kingdom. Puya is a very large genus of bromeliad, both in number of species and in size of plant. The genus includes the world’s largest species of bromeliad the Puya ramondii which grows up to 30 feet tall and 9 feet across. Like many Puya species, it is one of the only large-statured plants in high Andean puna ecosystems and an important structural and ecological component throughout its native range, providing food and shelter to a variety of animals.